Why is Joseph not Joseph everywhere? When did he become Giuseppe? Who decided that Guillaume should be William? When hearing a new name, why does a culture make its own version of it instead of letting every name stay at its root?
In: Culture
Because languages were spoken rather than written for most people in most of history.
You will see languages undergo various sound changes, rather consistently, over time. So if you take English, French, and Spanish, and take Latin root words, you will see a consistent pattern. You can do the same with German as well, leading to other differences (especially in French vs English, where the ruling classes spoke Germanic languages initially in northern France but quickly adopted French while retaining their own pronunciation quirks).
So, as a simple example, the English word “stranger”. It’s etranger in French, and extranjero in Spanish (the x is a similar sound to an s, though not the same; that’s another change). English keeps the s but not the e, French keeps the e but not the s, and Spanish keeps both. Stephen/Etienne/Esteban (Stephanus). Strangle/etrangler/estrangular (strangulare). Is/etre/estar (esse, but drawing from third person singular est).
Guard/ward and Guillaume/William are northern French/Germanic pairs, and Johann/John/~~Iago~~Juan/Ian/Jean are all different variations of the same thing in German, English, Spanish, Scots, and French (from Latin Iohannes). Once you see this, it becomes obvious that there are patterns. Not perfect maps, but patterns nonetheless.
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