| Christopher Columbus is a good example of how the names (both first and last) were freely changed according to the language and/or country. He was born Cristoforo Colombo. As Colombo means "male dove" in Italian, the surname in Latin (the universal language of the time) was "Columbus", that means the same, and that form was adopted in English. In Catalan he was (and is) known as Colom, a word that also means "male dove". In Castilian Spanish the word for a male dove is "palomo", but as this is quite different from the other cognates, the surname wasn't translated anymore. Currently in Spanish it's Colón, that doesn't mean anything but is simply the spelling of the Catalan surname Colom adapted to the Castilian orthography. |
Alliterative Names
Countries Visited by Captain Cook
Famous From the 17th Century
