A double twist: there are German names that look like English names but are actually German names. Michael, Paul.
Just wondering: what would Germans associate with the name Helga for women? To me it sounds Viking-awesome (heiligr).
If you want to name your kids in a way that is compatible without pronounciation issues in the larger Central European area, from Denmark to Hungary or Serbia, there are unfortunately not so many choices. For boys, Robert, Norbert, Henrik and of course the ubiquitous Peter. For girls, Helga, maybe Judit, Eva, Anna, For example something like Catherine is not a very good idea because it is written different in every language, from Katalin to Yekaterina. Anna has only one mutant forms, Anne in English, otherwise quite stable. For boys the stablest name is Norbert it either doesn't exist in a language or if it does it is written and pronounce exactly the same.
However I think people are becoming more "creative" and less compatibility-oriented with names... I know a German couple living in London who have a son called Yuriy. Reason? Gagarin. "We wanted someone who goes up". Okay...
However I think people are becoming more "creative" and less compatibility-oriented with names.
In general people in the creative class do so. It's not the names the average banker, doctor or judge gives their child.
Thus spake Eliezer:
It seems that many here might have outlandish ideas for ways of improving our lives. For instance, a recent post advocated installing really bright lights as a way to boost alertness and productivity. We should not adopt such hacks into our dogma until we're pretty sure they work; however, one way of knowing whether a crazy idea works is to try implementing it, and you may have more ideas than you're planning to implement.
So: please post all such lifehack ideas! Even if you haven't tried them, even if they seem unlikely to work. Post them separately, unless some other way would be more appropriate. If you've tried some idea and it hasn't worked, it would be useful to post that too.