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Famous-Named Foreigner: Difference between revisions
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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
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 [[They Just Didn't Care|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
Compare [[Named After Somebody Famous]], when this is done deliberately as a reference, and not just with foreign characters.
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== Albanian ==
* In [[The Simpsons]] episode "The Crepes of Wrath", the Albanian exchange student/spy living with the Simpsons in exchange for Bart is named
== Australian (Indigeneous) ==
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== Bulgarian ==
* Several members of the Bulgarian Quidditch team in ''[[Harry Potter]]'' bear the names of notable historical figures; Zograf is a 19th-century painter, Levski a revolutionary hero. Krum was a king who killed the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros, and is also famous for being the first to introduce written laws. "Krum" is particularly unlikely as a surname, though it has some popularity as a given name.
** Krum''ov'' may be more plausible. It's still a stretch but it's more plausible for a last name. ''Levski'' particularly stands out, though, first of all, because it is not at all common, and even then, it was a ''nickname''. Collecting so many weird names in the team crosses the line of [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality]] breaks the [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]].
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* Mao (as in Mao Tse-Tung) is fairly common, especially in anime. Note that Mao could be written several different ways in Chinese, and is a common enough surname.
** ''[[Code Geass]]''
** ''[[Darker Than Black]]'': Justified in that Mao literally means "cat" and the character in question is a [[Talking Animal|guy trapped in a cat body]] -- and it's a code name, not his real name.
** ''[[Full Metal Panic]]''
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* Miss Wenceslas in ''[[Sherlock]]'', presumably named for Wenceslaus of Bohemia. Unfortunately for the makers, the Czech version of the name is Václav, which is not used as a family name, and even if it were, would be lacking the "-ová" ending all female surnames that have a noun root.
* In the ''[[Night Watch]]'' series of novels, there is Czech vampire Vítězslav Hrubín. While "Vítězslav" is common name, this combination is obviously merging names of two famous Czech poets, Vítězslav Nezval and František Hrubín.
* At one point in ''[[Wet]]'', Rubi is put in contact with a Czech woman named [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka Kafka]
== Finnish ==
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== French ==
* ''[[St Trinian's]]'' school, in the 2007 film, has a French teacher called Miss [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maupassant Maupassant], though this is probably an intentional joke.
* Invisible Kid II from the [[Legion of Super-Heroes (Comic Book)|Legion of Super-Heroes]] was named [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Foccart Jacques Foccart]. For added irony appeal, he was also black.
* ''[[The X Files]]'': Chester [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_I_of_France Bonaparte] (''Fresh Bones'' episode)
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** In fairness, Tarantino was just dropping a reference to Julie Dreyfus.
* George de Sand from ''[[Mobile Fighter G Gundam (Anime)|Mobile Fighter G Gundam]]''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Sand George Sand] was the pen name of a ''woman''.
** And meant to sound ''English'' -- the French form of "George" is ''Georges'' and the French word for "sand" is ''sable''.
* ''[[Captain Tsubasa]]'': The two main players of the French team are named [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Cid El Sid] Pierre, and Louis [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_I_of_France Napoléon].
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* Indians in fiction named [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma "Mahatma"]. It's not a first name, it's a kind of honorific. Probably, the cause of this is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi Gandhi].
* In the late 1980s sitcom [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_of_the_Class "Head of the Class"], an Indian-American character is named "Jawaharlal Choudhury." Not only do the given name and the family name unlikely to be paired in a real Indian person because they come from two different ethnicities, but also "Jawaharlal" is obviously taken from the name of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Also, naming fashions change from generation to generation in India; thus, to an Indian, someone named Jawaharlal should have been born in the late 19th century, not someone who is a teenager in 1986.
* [http://ignisart.com/camdenhouse/canon/sign-12.htm Mahomet Singh] in the Sherlock Holmes novel ''The Sign of The Four''. The Penguin Books annotation calls this a solecism, and blandly remarks that "the two names would not be found together." This annotation should be accompanied by bells, whistles, flashing lights, and a
== Indonesian ==
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* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'': Colonel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Chekov Chekov].
* ''[[Bubblegum Crisis]]'':
** Nene [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Romanov Romanova]. Note that Romanov(a) is a common Russian surname, and most Romanovs in real life has absolutely no connection to the royal dynasty. On the other hand, Nene [[As Long As It Sounds Foreign|isn't a proper Russian name]], but
* ''[[Troper Works/Covert-81|Covert-81]]'':
** Katya [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Gerasimovich_Kuznetsov Kuznetsova] (though Kuznetsova is a pretty common Russian name, [[Silent Hunter|Word Of God]] says Katya is really named after the famous Admiral)
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