George Carlin might not agree 
As I said earlier in this discussion, this is not true in large areas of England.
Perhaps it is now. But, although I don’t know for sure, I suspect for a long time, the “Eye-Rack” pronunciation was by far the dominant one employed in the English-speaking world. Certainly, then, it seems that was, up until quite recently, the English pronunciation of Iraq.
It always seemed like an Americanism to me. Certainly no-one in the UK was pronouncing it that way - and as such I expect few in other English speaking countries were. SO maybe it was dominant in sheer numbers, but those people were in all likelihood in a single country.
For places, the English is often the same as the French. It took me some time to figure out Aix-la-Chappelle was the English name for Aachen when I was reading an article on the region’s history.
But a fellow student of mine mixed up Vienna and Venice when he had to give a presentation. Doesn’t quite work if want to claim Vienna was besieged by the Turkish fleet.
While modern names are not translated, e.g. Guiseppe Verdi is not called Joe Green, Roman / Greek names are. They have at least a German, French and English version. Probably Spanish and Italian too.
Secretly I have always though the English Greek/Roman names are very silly. Vergilius, Homeros, Galenus and Pompeius become Vergil, Homer, Galen, Pompey.
But if that isn’t enough, it doesn’t work that way for Augustus, Brutus, Marcus Aurelius, Commodus. Logically they should be called August, Brut, Marc Aurel, Commod, nut they somehow keep their full Latin names. It doesn’t make sense!
The fellow student I mentioned earlier was surpassed in stupidity by someone who, having read articles in several languages and not realising they were one and the same person, gave a presentation about Pompey AND Pompeius. Painful! Imagine watching Batman and not realising he and Bruce Wayne are the same person.
In Italian, Munich is Monaco (or so I was once told).
Not always. There’s some small changes, like Cristoforo Colombo, although the most blatant change is Giovanni Caboto to John Cabot.
It sure is. Looks like they use the expanded term “Monaco di Baviera”, to avoid confusion with the principality.
I’m not sure those names are “modern” enough for this particular analysis.
Anyway, I’m under the impression that Columbus and Cabot’s names were Latinized/Hispanicized/Anglicized contemporaneously by their own employers.
Similarly, I distinctly recall it was Eye-ran back in 1979 in the wake of the American Embassy hostage crisis, especially in West Texas, but on nationwide network news, too. That was probably the first time most Americans had ever heard of the place, or at least paid it any attention at all. The saying “Amercan ends in ‘I can,’ not ‘I ran’” spreang up (particularly ironic coming so soon after Vietnam :D).
I’m trying to recall how I heard Iraq pronounced around the time of the First Gulf War, but for that one, I’m not sure. Had left West Texas behind long before then, and that crisis was of much shorter duration. But if they called it Eye-ran just a decade earlier, Eye-rack would not be out of the question.
My recollection is that the network news pointedly did NOT use the “I ran” pronunciation. I wonder if there is any way to confirm.
Slightly unrelated, but:
I’ve always found it odd that Chinese and Korean names (“Mao Zedong,” for example, or “Kim Jong Il”) are usually written or said in the traditional “last-name-then-given-name” way in English, but Japanese names (“Akio Morita,” “Yukio Mishima,” or “Ken Takakura,” for example) aren’t. I’ve always wondered how that came about.
Possibly I am recalling only the local news. They, too, were a bunch of hicks like the other locals even if they were wearing suits.
I recall getting drunk one night early in that crisis and trying to call Ayatollah Khomeini to bitch him out. Really! I got as far as the Iranian operator, but he supposedly could not understand whom I wanted to talk to. 
All the names you gave were modern people. Historical figures like Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu don’t fit this pattern. It may be that the post-Meiji drive towards Westernization meant that the Japanese consciously used the given-surname order when speaking to westerners. Hungarian names follow the same “backwards” pattern, and they are smack dab in the middle of Europe, so perhaps also conceded when speaking to non-Hungarians. To reduce ambiguity, people from these cultures will often write their names YAMADA Shigeo, where the surname is in capitals.
It’s also interesting that in many Asian countries they find our “First Name-Family Name” system bewildering too- I spent a month in Malaysia being called “Mr. Martini” by people, or having people who were trying to be friendly and informal saying “Hey Enfield, how about we grab lunch?”. It goes without saying that I made the same mistakes too; accidentally referring to people as “Mr. Theirfather’sname” and so on. No offence taken by either side, of course.
It’s also interesting to note that many of my Asian and Indian friends and colleagues have taken “English” first names, as well.
Complicating it further, Thais do “First name, Surname” in that order, but STILL use Mr, Mrs etc with the FIRST name. John Smith is Mr John, and they know that’s not the surname.
In French, they are Auguste, Marc-Aurèle and Commode. And Brutus. Don’t ask me to explain that one.
Translation of names of historical personages from other languages is very inconsistent. For example, the names of Columbus’s patrons, in their own language, were Fernando and Isabel; Fernando is usually translated as Ferdinand, while Isabel is translated as Isabella, rather than as the English form of the name, Elizabeth. (Meanwhile, Elizabeth I of England is known as Isabel I in Spanish.)
And Ovide for Ovidius. Like that weird 80s cartoon about all those unrealistic animals on some island with TV screens popping op sometimes out of nowhere. (No really!)
I would just like to say that while I was vaguely aware of the Thai/Siam thing, I never made the connection with “Siamese”. Wow.:eek:
Chinese gets fun with some of their names for places. Most places (and people) have names that are relatively short, 2-4 characters long, with each character having one syllable when spoken. Many western places, such as California, Texas, and America, either have more syllables, or much more often, syllables using sounds that can’t be produced in Chinese. So they give names that vaguely approximate the pronunciation, while usually attempting to sound at least vaguely flattering (no need to give them an insulting name.)
America is “Mei Guo”, which translates back as “Beautiful Country”, Germany is “De Guo”, France “Fa Guo”. Converserly, in Mandarin, the name for China is “Zhong Guo”, which translates as “Middle Country”. As far as i know, the western name for China is a reference to the Qin Dynasty (pronounced “Cheen”, not “Kin”, incidentally).
Speaking of names, I’ve met a few folks in the military who had names which I couldn’t hope to pronounce by looking at them. This included one airman who everybody (including the sergeants and officers) referred to as “S-Thirteen”, and a Master Sergeant of Polish descent who insisted that everybody call him “Master Sergeant N” (which was funny because the rules in place in that particular training unit was that airmen addressed all NCOs and Senior NCOs by their full rank and last name, leading to many airmen entering his office and staring at length at his name tape without speaking)