Ok, here's a bit of a test for you.
So you know how Paolo is the Portuguese version of Paul, Antonio is the Italian version of Anthony, and Juan is the Spanish version of John?
Well, there's a lot more where that came from. Below are some names from all over Europe and surrounding areas. All are local versions of male given names that are common in English.
Your task: to identify their common English variant. Some of them are quite easy, some a little harder, but all are guessable if you put your mind to it. It might be helpful to bear in mind the way sounds can change from region to region; for instance, a /p/ sound in one language might easily be replaced by a /f/ or /b/ in another language.
1. João (Portuguese)
2. Guillaume (French)
3. Bostjan (Slovene)
4. Thiago (Brazilian Portugese)
5. Hagop (Armenian)
6. Hristo (Bulgarian)
7. Djibril (Arabic)
8. Dawit (Amharic)
9. Sikander (Persian/Hindi/Urdu)
10. Duarte (Portuguese/Spanish)
11. Jerzy (Polish)
12. Carlito (Spanish)
13. Boutros (Arabic)
14. Klaas (Dutch)
15. Shmuley (Hebrew)
16. Giuseppe (Italian)
Bear in mind that each of the above is not necessarily the only variant of that name, in the same way that Rick, Richard and Dick are all variants of the same name in English.
I shall post the answers in the comments section (below).
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