How English names are pronounced in Cherokee?

Answer 1

No, modern names are normally a "Christian" or "European" invention (source) and not Tsalagi (the spoken language of the Cherokee). In some rare cases you can search the source of your name in its European form, and once you find that root you can translate the root word to Tsalagi IF the word is a noun.

That's true enough, as it goes. There is however the notion that Christian names are usually of Hebraic origin, and a great many of those are names involving the name of God. Judah for example. James is a translation of Jacob. Abraham means Father of Nations, Abram is simply Father. Mary means rebellious. Martha means housewife. Dorcas and Tabitha are names that translate to "goat" or "gazelle" and refer to the grace with which they walk.

Then there's actual English names, from the Celtic languages, Heather is a flower, so is Jennifer, which is also Guenivere. And Fern. Rose. Daisy.

The concept is that a name, of whatever origin, actually HAS an origan. Richard means "rich man". It's much on the order that a name in whatever language has an original meaning, and that's the meaning you would have to translate. The English did it with Mary, James, Martha, ,Tabitha...

You would have to find out what the name means in its original context and language.

Some names would be hard to equate, a Lakota guy was explaining this last year in a street festival here in Colroado Springs.

For instance, "horse" in Lakota is the combined words Big Dog. Because until the Europeans brought the horse, dogs were the preferred beast of burden in America. The guy explained to the tourists that in Lakota there's no word for Coffee, because it's an African origin plant introduced by the Europeans. No word for Monkey or Banana. If you tried to translate Dorcas or Leonard (like a lion) you would have to use the local equivalent animals and it wouldn't be an exact match.

The flower names too, are usually a Celtic or Latin word describing the flower by color, like Rose being pink and Jennifer being a white flower. Darnel means Little Weed in French.

Again that would have to be dug into. With the names like Leonard you would have to come up with an equivalent to Brave and Strong anf Fierce, which are the Lion attributes assigned to the original names. That's where creativity comes in.

But, the names do have a source, the sources are fairly common between cultures, they're never an abstraction, a string of sounds put together just because they sound pretty.

The process starts sounding simple, then gets complex, and back around to simplicity.

The simple part is, find the root definition of the name. From whatever branch of the Human family, whatever language, every name has a meaning that can be discovered.

One more thing, Mama means the same thing in every human language. It's one of those things that probably isn't a coincidence. It's the steps between that and being a walking dictionary that make Language fun.

Answer 2

When saying someone's name, you do not "translate" it - you pronounce it as the person has always pronounced it because that's the polite thing to do.