Pitt means dick in Swedish. There was an awesome TV ad a few years back for a weekend of Brad Pitt movies, with taglines like: “Are you insatiable for Pitt?” and “More Pitt than you can handle”. Hur hur.
O’Connor sounds a bit like “Oh, connard” (Hey, asshole) in French
Isn’t “hana” = “flower” in Japanese? The way I’ve heard it pronounced sounds very much like the name “Hannah”, so I would’ve thought her name became “Flower stapler”.
So Clive Cussler’s hero Dirk Pitt sounds like One Tough Dude in Swedish, then?
I would go see a band called Gonorrhea Bus.
Hey! I resemble that remark. :mad:
花 (hana) is flower. 鼻 (hana) is nose. There are a lot of words in Japanese that use different kanji (and usually different pitch-accent) but are spelled the same in kana or romaji (roman letters).
Yeah, or one horny dude at least. 
Speaking of tough names, I’ll offer you this in exchange: a common name among Swedish women born in the 1940’s is Gun.
The Indonesian word “babi” sounds like my childhood name, “Bobby”. Unfortunately, “babi” means “pig”. Approximately 5 minutes after moving to Indonesia, my dad forgot that I was supposed to be called, “Bob” and he hollered for me. The Indonesian kids thought it was quite amazing to hear a man calling his son a pig. And it was an overwhelmingly Muslim neighborhood, too.
Good times, good times.
Not a personal name, and not even English, but I just had to throw it out there: There is a winery in New Zealand called Te Mata – it’s Maori for something or other. In Spanish, this means “It kills you”!
“Pepitone” supposedly entered the Japanese vernacular as meaning “goof off”, due to Joe Pepitone’s (lack of) performance for the Yakult Atoms.
In most films I recall with Japanese subtitles, the name “Gary” is often transcribed as “ゲアリー” or “GEH-ah-ree.” I haven’t seen a “GAH-ree” in subtitles.
Which can actually be a good thing to say about something; we just like making things mean the opposite of what they theoretically should.
Cf. the official slogan “¡Madrid me mata!” (Madrid kills me) from the 1980s, which is both an example of that and a continuation of the old sentence “de Madrid al Cielo” (from Madrid to Heaven), meaning once you’ve seen Madrid you’re done, there’s nothing else you need to do before you can say you’ve led a full life - conceited? Noooooooooo!
Direct translations of English names (Blizzard et al, I’m looking at you) tend to sound like shit in Spanish, but I can’t come up with any English words that directly sound bad or funny in Spanish. We sort of have too many different phonemes for that to happen a lot.
I don’t remember every seeing the name in subtitles, but ガリ (Gari) is what I recally Gary using, per the instruction of the first Japanese teacher. WWWJDIC gives ゲイリー (Geiri) for Gary by itself, and lists ゲーリー (Geerii) ギャリー (Gyarii) ゲイリー (Geirii) for the given names of various famous Garys.
“De Cock: Private Dick” 
If your name is Nick, be careful introducing yourself to Arabs.
Nik is Arabic for fuck.
This is not even in a foreign language, but another variety of English. I have friends named Ralph and Randi. When visiting Australia, they learned that these are not common names down there, and the primary meanings that immediately come to most people’s minds are “Vomit” and “Horny”.
^^^OMG!^^^
BECKY!
Did you see Ralph and Randi?
In Urdu/Hindi Laura means penis. When my mother started teaching first grade English in Pakistan, she couldn’t figure out why the kids wouldn’t stop laughing, when the primer they used had Laura as the protagonist in every story.
My mother didn’t speak any Urdu at the time. Apparently neither did the Irish and Dutch priests who ran the school.
This thread reminded me of a joke from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt that claimed that in Vietnamese Kimmy means penis (The joke comes from the fact that this was said by a Vietnamese man named Dong). I have never been sure if that’s actually true, or if the writers just made that up for the sake of the joke.
Can confirm! Ralph is not so bad and is occasionally used (mostly in the over-70s) but there are zero Randy’s and that name would always be good for a giggle
Not a name but the mathematically unimpeachable term coproduct has some meaning like shit in Spanish.
Just curious – is the male name Randall used in Australia? In the US it is commonly shortened to Randy; is Randall not used or is it just the nickname that doesn’t occur?
My friend did quickly learn not to introduce herself to new people by saying “Hi, I’m Randi.” :eek: