How did Fernão de Magalhães come to be known as Ferdinand Magellan? Why are certain historical figures recorded under very different names in history books around the world?

by DanHam117
Searocksandtrees

hi! Fernão de Magalhães is still so known in Portuguese; if you take a look at his English Wikipedia page and hover your cursor over the languages in the left-hand sidebar, you'll see many many variations of his name. You'll find similar situations for many other people's names, as well as places and other terms.

There's a short explanation for this variation in the /r/Linguistics FAQ (here), which includes a link to this thread. I send you there because I'm stumped to remember the names of the previous related questions here, and our closest-related FAQ section (Why do countries have different names in other languages?) focuses only on country names.