| > Do you want the same pronunciation? This is also fairly easy in many languages, but the spelling is likely to differ. An example of this might be Hannah versus Hana (English / Czech). > Do you want both? For most languages, the list will be extremely short, perhaps half a dozen names such as "Anna". As a sanity check, I looked up wikipedia's page on Czech phonology, which indicates that the vowel [æ] does not exist in Czech. That by itself will absolutely prevent the English names Hannah /'hænə/ or Anna /'ænə/ from matching any possible Czech pronunciation. I'm kind of curious how you came up with the examples. (Ali is a name that will transfer well across many languages.) > In this scenario, you're effectively going by two differently-pronounced names in all face-to-face interactions, not that different from the folks from China or India who are adopting "Westernized" names abroad. People can overlook what I consider stupid obvious requirements in this kind of scenario. I knew a Chinese girl who used the English name Cynthia. It's a perfectly respectable English name; the only problem was that she was completely unable to pronounce "Cynthia", making it a challenge for her to communicate her own name to English speakers. I don't understand why Chinese speakers don't put more [any] emphasis on using names that they are themselves able to pronounce, like Tina or Julie. |
Some are assigned an English name by their first English teacher in school. This English teacher themselves may not really be able to speak English (e.g. this is the case for more than one person in my family). By the time they figure out otherwise, it's kinda stuck/habit.