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I think you're right about the Russian transliterations changing. There are like 5 different legitimate spellings for Dimitri.

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But Odri would be pronounced "OH-dree" in Portugal...That "adaption" makes no sense. But if I really wanted that particular pronunciation that much, I might consider changing it to Adri, or use the Portugues form, Adriana, and use that as a nickname. But really, the slight change in pronunciation wouldn't really bother me there. I speak some Spanish, so I'm used to the "ow" sound for "au", and I pronounced names like Claudia both ways compulsively.

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I see what you're saying about how variations do a disservice to the original language. In a perfect world, I really would like to use Walentyna. If I lived in a country that pronounced the W as V, like Germany for instance, I would do it. Here it would cause wayyyy too much confusion. It's one thing if it's a letter in the middle of you're name, but when they're already writing out your name and they have the first letter wrong, that's a big deal. And many people here do not immediately realize that W is pronounced V in certain languages. You'd be surprised how stupid people can be when it comes to basic knowledge of foreign languages. My mom pronounces the ll's in "tortilla", and I can't teach people for my life simple things like the fact that the name Roberto is pronounced roughly "ro-BEHR-to", not just Robert with an "o". And no offense, but even you just mistakenly tried to use an O where you should have used an A in a Romance language. They are very different sounds in those languages. Classic American mistake that I see all the time.

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I hate having to pander to ignorance, but that's how the majority of Americans are at the moment. Some countries make a sincere effort to pronounce foreign names and words correctly. Germans are known for this. The "y" in the name is me holding on to the spelling where I think I can. It's my little Slavic touch, and I don't care if it looks Ukrainian or whatever. The Ukies and the Poles are brothers. In a way, I don't want to completely anglicize the name because I think Slavic things are beautiful. That one little "y" is the one thing I want to keep, as one small step towards people not being so intimidated by Slavic names, like my long Polish last name. I know they're not ready for Walentyna yet, so I'm not going to lay that burden on a daughter. You said changing the name does a disrespect towards the original language. That's why I think Valentyna is far better than Valentina. It changes less. So I hope we can agree to disagree.

This message was edited 5/18/2010, 10:26 AM