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
Have you ever been to a foreign country and had someone mispronounce your name? It’s not that they all sit down and decide on how to mispronounce it, they pronounce it as well as they can, with the sounds their language uses. Not all languages use every combination of sounds, and something like a name gets a regional version that sounds good and pronouncable to the locals.
This is so pronounced with names because many names are very old, old enough that the language you speak sounded very, very different when the name got popularized by, for instance, the bible. In the time since then, languages have changed a lot, and the names with them.
Joseph or Michael were not originally pronounced the way you think of as the “right” way, the reason you think so is that that’s how they are pronounced in your own region.
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