“Madhukar” literally means maker (kar) of honey (madhu). How does that compare to the etymology of “Melissa”?
“Madhu” is a cognate of English “mead” (honey wine).
bordelond: Sanskrit-derived Jagganath (cf “juggernaut”) [from Skt. jagan-natha] is a semantic cognate of Slavic Vladimir (“lord of the world”).
Whoa there. How’d that happen? I know that words that are etymologically cognate can be superficially different, but those names look really different.
And yeah, I’m also wondering about the relation of “Melissa” to madhu/mead/Germ. meth/ Slav. medu.
“Madhu” is also a cognate of the Greek root meli-, meaning “honey”.
It’s not uncommon for alveolar stop consonants (t, d, dh) to be s, l, or r in other languages.
I was careful to include the qualifier “semantic”, because I know that the phonetics don’t hold up. That means I was incorrect in saying the two were “cognates”. It’s better to say that the two names are version of one another with the same meaning.
veda = wit, niz = night, vrka = wolf, atti (ad) = eat, sthiti = stay, sthaana = stand, maamsa = meat, kartati (krt) = [to] cut, uurna = wool, divasa = day, udaka = water, uudha = guide, raaj = reign, laghu = light, daaru (= wood) ~ tree, odana = food, gurvii = great, aahata = hit, hrdaya = heart, smita = smile, sarpa = serpent, go = cow, pacati = [to] bake, urvii = earth, maanava = man,… not 100% sure but they do sound very close, don’t they?
Look for them in Hispanic countries, I know a few. It seems to be coming up in Spain right now, you meet both old ladies and little babies with the name.
Interesting! But beware the zombie thread.
The Farsi girls name Sohi is surely a cognate of Sophie.
Both mean “wisdom” or something similar?
Maybe I’m wrong then, I believe Sohi means ‘Fresh’.
Possibly Anil and Neil; the former means ‘air, wind’ and the latter’s etymology is either champion or cloud.
Two ‘false friends’ that I come across often are the Irish Sheila (mostly in older women) and Indian Sheela (women of any age). Then there’s Kieran, an Irish boys’ name, and Kiran, a Sikh name for either boys or girls - it caused some confusion when my straight male friend Simon was dating a Kiran. 
Jackpot!!! List of Proto-Indo-European roots with meanings and cognates in various languages. Lots of good name fodder in there.
My favorite so far is the root *h₂stḗr, “star”, from which Latin “Stella”, Sanskrit “Tara”, and Persian “Setareh” are all derived. I’m also liking **bʰel-*, “light, bright, radiance”, source of Sanskrit “Bharga”, “Bhargavan”, etc., and Latin “Flavus”, “Flavius”.
Very cool thread. According to Wiktionary, Rex (and its female form, Regina) is indeed a cognate to Rajah (and its female form, Rani).
Cyrus is a Hellenization of Old Persian Kurush, with the meaning “Sun” so is probably not in any way a cognate of Caesar.
This might explain the shambling Hindi-speakers calling out** दिमाग**