I’m flipping back and forth between this forum and another. In the other one, The topic is "jokes:
For a second I thought I was still in this thread.
Other than Esmeralda, you mean? Well, ok, so it’s well-known and currently used in several languages other than English, but still, it doesn’t seem like it would be so difficult to figure out it means Emerald.
I wouldn’t be surprised if her contemporaries will be asking why she was named after the computer company - after all, say “blackberry” to a kid these days and I guarantee they won’t be imagining raiding summer hedgerows, basket in hand…
I think Severynn is on the right track. As long as we have a tradition of naming people after people, names will continue to diverge from the language itself. The names themselves stay constant, but the language changes underneath them.
It is noteworthy that, for instance, in the Old Testament of the Bible where many many names are given explicit meanings, they don’t name people after people pretty much ever (I think we had a thread about this once and managed to find about 2 instances, and they may well have been coincidence)
In modern-day cultures, where names generally have dictionary meanings, do they also name people after people in the same culture?
I presume that Butch is a nickname rather than a given name.
Sure, but there’s a degree of overlap. For instance, my son’s name has run in my wife’s family for centuries - and also means “God’s healer”
Hebrew names, both classical and modern, usually have some sort of meaning. For instance, here are translations of the names of some of the kids in my son’s preschool:
Light
Venus (the planet)
Sparrow
Pleasing
My Light (a)
Goddess
Mica
Cypress
Maiden
Buzzard
World (in Aramaic)
Date Palm
Silk
My Light (b)
Lion of God
Valley
Sapphire
Era
Adornment
Joy
Sheaf
Some of the above names are also Biblical, like Tamar (Date Palm) and Na’ama (Pleasing).
Well, I didn’t make the connection. Maybe I could have guessed what it meant if you’d told me it means something and then asked me to guess. In any case, an emerald is a thing, a green mineral, and yeah it may mean something, but really, it’s just a pretty name (did her parents hope she would grow up to be green?) 
Butch on the other hand is a character trait. And Butch the movie character is about as butch as you can get. Perhaps he could have been more butch if he was actually chewing on a cigar stub while he rode off on a chopper with his French girlfriend to skip the border to Mexico after killing his opponent in a professional boxing match and then, against his own interests, using a katana to go rescue his mob boss enemy from serial sodomists, because that’s the man code. But I doubt it.
In real life, it probably would be. But it’s the character’s name in the script.
Oh, and obviously, she’s asking what his name means because she’s used to names meaning something , like hers does.
Would it be fair to say that Hebrew is a special case here because it has remained so unchanged for so long? At least, as I understand it modern Hebrew is basically the same as Biblical Hebrew so you could have a name invented as far back as a couple of thousand years ago still having meaning in modern Hebrew. That wouldn’t work for English.
That’s true, especially when you add modern Hebrew names - all of which were coined over the past century, most of them on the basis of regular Hebrew words.
My usual guess when I meet an Esmeralda is that her parents were fans of Victor Hugo’s story; I think his Esmeralda had green eyes (it’s been a while since I last read The Hunchback of Notre Dame, in a kiddified version).
…and Lance. Can’t forget Lance. 
dnr
There might be something to this. In Indian culture, there’s a taboo against giving someone a name that a close relative has. Names are also given with the literal meaning (often in Sanskrit) in the forefront of the discussion. When my brother and his wife were naming their children, there was much discussion among family members about the meanings of the candidate names and whether the meanings were “good.” My niece’s name was subject to a last-minute change when too many relatives objected to the original name chosen based on one of the possible literal meanings (which, if I remember correctly, was “disliked one”).
One of the most common names for little boys these days, in my neck of the woods, is “Hunter”.
Don’t be a Dick.
Cite as to the frequency of meaningful names in various cultures?
This site says it means “great”. Also, neither “Darren” nor “Darrin” appeared in any of the top-Gaelic-names lists I could find.
I don’t point this out to be obnoxious but rather to make a point. It is not my experience that other cultures and languages necessarily have more names that mean something. Rather, it is my impression that Americans think that other cultures and languages have more names that mean something. These are just impressions, though, and hence my call for cites.
When you hear a foreign word, you naturally want to anchor it in your mind by translating it into your native tongue. But, in my experience, the literal translation is just, “Ummm… it’s just a name. It doesn’t mean anything.” However, names often have historical or etymological “meaning”, and you might get that. For instance: someone might that the name Olivia means “olive tree”. But that is not the same as actually naming your kid “Olive Tree” or saying that you just planted an Olivia in the backyard. Similary: Sophia means “wisdom”. Stephen mean “crown”. Kevin means “handsom”. But “means” here doesn’t equate to “is directly translatable as”.
Yeshua or Yeshiva. I think it evolved into “Joshua”.
By the way, I understand Yeshua/Yeshiva was a pretty common name back in Jesus’ day. It’s as if Jesus’ name had been “John” or “Bob”.
Quoth Alessan:
How does it come to pass that something meaning “Goddess” is a Hebrew name? Surely, the Hebrew people’s polytheistic days are too far past for a name to have held out that long in the culture. Is it from modern neopagan influences?
Actually, that was a bit of a cheat - “goddess” in Hebrew is “Ella”, so the name can either be a Hebrewization of the English-language name, or it can be derived from the nickname for “Daniela” or “Michaela” or some such (because one generation’s nickname is the next generation’s proper name).
Still, the fact that it *has *a meaning is important, even if was arrived at in a backward fashion. Israelis don’t like to give their kids meaningless names. Besides, “goddess” can be meant figuratively - after all, “Steadfast”, “Valor” and “Lightning” are popular Hebrew male names, so why can’t you say a girl is goddess-like?
Unless the men have no arms and no legs.
(As in the “What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs who…” jokes.)