abstract
| - So, you decide to create a work of fiction with some foreign characters in it. E.g., your hero battles two evil generals - a Frenchman and a German. But there's one little problem. You know neither German, nor French, and have no clue about how these wacky foreigners are usually named. But you've got an idea! A quick search in the dark corners of your memory reveals some scarce knowledge about French and German history and culture. With local names in it! That's the answer to all your problems! Half a minute later, you've got names for your villains - Napoleon Dumas and Friedrich-Wilhelm Goethe. That sounds pretty authentic, right? Right? A Famous-Named Foreigner is a character hailing from some foreign nation who, due to the authors not knowing anything about local naming conventions and/or thinking it would make their nationality more recognizable and/or just being lazy, is named after some very famous person from the respective nation's history or culture. Which most of the time sounds pretty ridiculous to the local ear, due to those names often being quite rare and primarily associated with those same famous persons. This trope, as noted earlier, is often the result of either Did Not Do the Research, Small Reference Pools or They Just Didn't Care. If the authors care even less, it often results in As Long as It Sounds Foreign. And of course, names do become popular because famous people have them -- for example, "Muhammad" is by far the most common name for Muslim boys (and in fact, is the single most common boy's name in the world). Compare Named After Somebody Famous, when this is done deliberately as a reference, and not just with foreign characters. Examples of Famous-Named Foreigner include:
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