It all started when I learned that Étienne is the French equivalent of Stephen/Steven, meaning they share the same origin. Istvan and Isteban are in the same boat. And I did a little research!
I also found out that William and Guillermo have the same origin too.
Moreover, Zhena and Yana are actually variations of the same name.
It also turned out that Zeus and Jupiter essentially mean the same thing — father of the sky (Dyeus-pater).
It also turns out that the names Joel and Elijah are from the same root. In Hebrew, these are two words “Yahweh” and “God”, just in a different order.
Hansel and John are also from the same root. Both mean Lord is gracious. The same goes for Ivan, Hans, and Juanita.
The names Agnes, Nancy, and Inez, it turns out, have a common root.
Diego and Yakov – are from the same root. Moreover, from Yakov also come Jacob, Jack, Cobey, James, Jamie, Jim, Jacqueline, and Santiago.
Dorothy and Theodore – are from the same root (mean god’s gift).
Isabel, Elizabeth, and Lisa – are the same. These names stemmed from the Hebrew name Elisheva (Elisheva), which means “my God is an oath” or “my God is abundance”.
Iskander and Alexander — are from the same root, but that seems obvious.
Patroclus and Cleopatra — both mean “glory of the father”, although, of course, they are not related (Greece and Egypt).
Gauthier and Walter — are from the same root, “ruler of the army”.
Neil is essentially Cornelius.
And here’s another cool fact. The name Audrey (Audrey Hepburn, for example) originated from (attention!) Old English Æthelthryth, which has a couple of other spellings – Æðelþryð or Æþelðryþe).
Interestingly, if a person is called Jacob Santiago, it essentially means Jacob, Saint Jacob 🙂
My name is constantly confused by taxi drivers, and they call me either Ralph or Raul. So, Ralph and Raul are from the same root, and mean “wolf-counselor”.
My name (Rauf, رَؤُوف)- is a separate story, translating as “Forgiving/Merciful” from Arabic, and is one of the 99 names of Allah from the Quran and Sunnah. For example, if robbers repent of their misdeeds, the prescribed punishment is not applied to them, relying instead on the following statement from the Quran: “This does not apply to those who repented before you gained victory over them. Be it known that Allah is Forgiving, Merciful!”. The mention of these two names indicates that Allah forgives such people and shows compassion, relieving them of the prescribed punishment.
A separate big topic about non-names. I need to make a separate post about it. For starters: galaxy and lactose come from the Greek word for milk, gala. Genitive – galaktos. It seems that the Milky Way was not a strange choice of name after all…
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 