These assistants are really not working well in multi-lingual settings but I suspect that the stuff Apple was doing wouldn't improve it. Some functions are disabled if you have Siri in one language and your device in another.
But I mean, surely it's not that unusual to have English as the language set to everything, to live in an English speaking country, and yet either have a foreign name yourself or just be friends with someone who does. And it's not that Siri/Google Assistant don't recognize those names period - they would, had they been set to the language those names originate from. But if you're set to English then forget it. And yes, I understand this is a difficult problem to solve, but I had I not known anything about internal workings of technology and was just a regular customer, I would absolutely consider the ability to call someone "basic functionality".