Thanks to Lady Eruwaedhiel, I've been thinking about name translation lately. She told me that Ionwë is Jordan in Elvish and I began to wonder if the best way to translate names was by translating the sounds (i.e. Yeshua becoming the Greek Iesous, becoming English Jesus) or by translating the meaning of the name (i.e. Cephas = rock = Greek "Petros" = English "Peter").

There are plenty of examples of both, and I just begin to wonder which one is the most true to the name for instance, my name is of Semitic origin meaning "descending, coming down" so would the "truest" translation of my name be a translation of the sounds, which would make the truest pronunciation of my name "Yordan" in Spanish (the Spanish "j" is pronounced [h] while in many countries, the "y" and "ll" are often pronounced [j]) though in the Spanish Bibles, the spelling is left the same and it's simply pronounced phonetically, which would be "Hordan" in English. Or would we translate "descending" and adapt it into a name for me. I think in most cases the translation/approximation/adaptation of the sounds of a name is probably the truest means of translating personal names. Otherwise the person wouldn't know who people were talking about.
But what do y'all think?

In Christ,
Jordan

Thanks, but you might want to post the translation for the sake of those who don't speak Spanish...like me!

Me too! I can't read/speak/write spanish!

Google Translate isn't coming up with most of the words. Not sure why!

::wishes that she'd gotten to take more than just that 3/4 year of elementary Spanish::

Since he hasn't gotten around to translating it yet:
"hahaha, I like the reference to the pronunciation of 'J' in Spanish."

Yes! 'megusta' does mean 'I like'! (I remembered 'gusta' as meaning the verb 'like' but couldn't remember the correct personal pronoun that would match in the context) <smile> Glad to see not all my Spanish was for naught.

This may sound totally wierd, but after I was half-way through my novel, I started writing the elvish language for it. After I got the language fairly developed, I went in and looked for the meanings of my character's made up names. To my complete and total surprise, I had unintentionally created name meanings in the language that not only fit the sylables for my characters (root, prefix, and suffix-wise), but that also fit thier personalities. I was pretty excited and totally amazed: believe me it was totally coincidental.

My suggestion to you might be to look up the meaning of the name you want to use (like "Jordan"), and then translate the meaning into your language, which might then make it seem more authentic.

Haha, I'm rather excited now. I can actually read that!

Anyhow, back on topic. I think I like the idea of translating the sounds rather than the meaning. Sounds are easier to figure out than meanings, therefore making it easier to figure out who the person is talking about.