Can you pick the French form or cognate of the name given?

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French-English Name Dictionary Quiz

by nightfloat

Created Sep 14, 2012 in Language
Featured Feb 14, 2013
Game Plays 35,020

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	halophex:	Feb 14th, 2013 at 17:08 GMT		82 points
	Cosmas, Quirinus, Theodoric, Ivo? Are you sure you didn't get some non-English names mixed into this?

	TAR2:	Feb 14th, 2013 at 17:32 GMT		29 points
	What language are the given names in? Definitely not English.

	bfisher2:	Feb 14th, 2013 at 17:35 GMT		-2 points
	I think there's too much time given. Maybe 5 minutes is better?

	johnspartan4187:	Feb 14th, 2013 at 18:10 GMT		15 points
	The Enlish names sound like characters from Lord of the Rings or wizards from the world of Harry Potter!

	Tom_q:	Feb 14th, 2013 at 18:42 GMT		8 points
	Don't worry guys, the French names are just as obscure. I never heard of Mélisande and Corin, and many of the others have not been used for decades or centuries (Côme, Yseult, Baudouin...).

	Koltrane:	Feb 14th, 2013 at 18:47 GMT		24 points
	I have to agree. Some of the French names are more familiar than the "English" names. I've never met an Ariadne, and the only Hyacinth I know is named Bucket (that's Boo-kay).

	Meltha:	Feb 14th, 2013 at 19:14 GMT		9 points
	I admit to messing up Rocco as Pierre since it also means "rock."

	Lexistential:	Feb 14th, 2013 at 19:24 GMT		13 points
	I grew up knowing someone named Stephen Gautier. I clicked it while thinking: "Surely they didn't do this...". Apparently no, they did not.

	Jeffhabfan:	Feb 14th, 2013 at 19:24 GMT		4 points
	@Koltrane, the only place I've ever heard of Ariadne was Ariadne Oliver, Hercule Poirot's mystery-writing friend. Hyacinth is likely a little more common, as people do traditionally like naming their girls after beautiful flowers.

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	TimN:	Feb 15th, 2013 at 00:08 GMT		9 points
	Surely Terry, or at a stretch Terence, is more common than Theodoric? And matches the same French name.

	nehemiah:	Feb 15th, 2013 at 02:01 GMT		-2 points
	Jacques is James??

	OliveGreen:	Feb 15th, 2013 at 04:42 GMT		4 points
	I would bet my life that Jack is anglicized Jacques, and therefore a better cognate than James. I adore these sorts of quizzes though. I did expect some that didn't appear though. Henri/Henry, Lawrence/Laurent, Guy/Guido...

	object_holder:	Feb 15th, 2013 at 04:45 GMT		5 points
	@Tom_q: There's a 19th-century French play called "Pelléas and Mélisande," which was turned into an opera by Debussy. That's the only place I've ever heard the name. It sure has a lot more mystery than "Millicent"!

	nightfloat:	Feb 15th, 2013 at 11:32 GMT		6 points
	Jack is a nickname of John from the days when -kin was used to make English diminutives. It's not related to Jacques. Terry is an indirect match for Thierry via a surname, whereas Theodoric is a direct match having always been a first name (as well as Thierry). I'm sorry that not everyone is interested in the more obscure names. I find them fascinating.

	matt01:	Feb 15th, 2013 at 12:42 GMT		0 points
	amazing how many names have th when they can't pronounce it

	halophex:	Feb 15th, 2013 at 18:28 GMT		8 points
	@nightfloat: I actually really enjoy this series of quizzes and I hope you keep them coming. However, I think there's an issue with broken expectations. It's like when a movie is marketed as being "the scariest movie ever!" - then you go see it and it's actually pretty good but not scary at all - you are still disappointed. Recently there was a quiz published about "landlocked" US states. People tore that quiz apart in the comments and gave it substandard ratings because it messed with their reasonable expectations of how landlocked should be defined. It was a decent quiz but poorly named. I think the same is going on here. This is a good quiz. But the title here makes you think you're going to see English names. While technically a lot of these names are English - they might as well be foreign to most of us, because we've never seen them before. Your quiz description is spot on - "Can you pick the French form of the name given." But the title is a little misleading. Sorry this comment was so long. But I feel strongly about this issue.

	dancastro:	Feb 16th, 2013 at 00:01 GMT		6 points
	@matt01: in French there are lots of "th" although they're pronounced as "t". That happens because French has an etymological orthography. They write théâtre because in Latin the word was spelled with th (theatrum). Other languages like Spanish or Italian have a phonetic orthography, that's why in those languages it's simply "teatro": they spell it the way it's pronounced.

	Agwes:	Feb 16th, 2013 at 02:11 GMT		2 points
	in inception ellen page's character is named ariadne. but these names really are pretty obscure...

	D_Mac:	Feb 16th, 2013 at 03:06 GMT		9 points
	Jacques is absolutely the equivalent of James (and not Jack). It's a biblical name, and it's always translated that way. Another good one would be William -> Guillaume, both of which are common names in each language.

	paohandle:	Feb 16th, 2013 at 07:27 GMT		4 points
	I don't feel like there's too many obscure French names, the only ones I never heard of were Corin, Mélisande and Aubert. Some of the other aren't used nowadays but they aren't exactly obscure.

	dancastro:	Feb 16th, 2013 at 16:21 GMT		1 point
	Probably a reason of people in older times having obscure names was the custom of naming a baby after the saint of the day in which he/she was born. It was common in Spanish-speaking countries (I don't know if also in France). If a boy was born on Oct. 4th (the feast of St. Francis of Assisi) he was named Francisco or François. Of course, there's nothing strange in the name Francis, but there are lots of saints with obscure or even ridiculous names.

	matt01:	Feb 16th, 2013 at 22:34 GMT		2 points
	@dancastro it was a joke...

	RS89:	Feb 17th, 2013 at 04:27 GMT		6 points
	Pretty sure the more common French version of Albert is . . . Albert.

	darthplaydoh:	Feb 18th, 2013 at 23:16 GMT		7 points
	I taught English to elementary schoolers in France (Metz) during the 2010-2011 academic year and I had about 5 Mélisandes. So it may be that it's coming back into popularity for some reason(?)

	debbiedoesnothin:	Feb 19th, 2013 at 16:55 GMT		2 points
	@darthplaydoh: Just like old-fashioned names are coming back into style in the U.S. Evelyn and Charlotte are examples currently in the top 100 that were out of style for years. Cora, Hazel and Genevieve are in the top 200. Most of us probably don't know anyone by those names who's under the age of 50-60 or over the age of 5.

	nightfloat:	Feb 22nd, 2013 at 09:22 GMT		2 points
	@halophex: Unfortunately now that Sporcle has rubber-stamped my poor title, I cannot change it.

	geoshelly99:	Mar 23rd, 2013 at 03:16 GMT		1 point
	Definitely realized I am better at reading foreign languages than speaking or understanding everything spoken. I rather like these games.

	Door:	Apr 10th, 2013 at 15:38 GMT		1 point
	@darthplaydoh: Probably has a lot to do with the popularity of the book series A Song of Ice and Fire/TV series Game of Thrones. There is a character by that name.