Upvote:0
First you should not confuse the monarchs with ordinary people. Monarchs usually called by the traditional forms of their names in many countries both then and now.
Regarding spelling of the names of common people, it depends on the language rules, I an totally sure I would change the spelling of my name when moving from Russia to another country.
Upvote:5
There is a difference between translation and transliteration. The Чайко́вский example obviously had to be transliterated, and there are different transliteration conventions in different languages.
Interestingly, the cities München, Nürnberg and Köln usually get translated, while Berlin or Hamburg don't. Does the diaeresis have anything to do with it?
Upvote:5
At which point in history did the bureaucracy stop people from altering their names when emigrating from a country to another so that they had to keep the spelling in their original language?
The above premise is not true or at least not true for all countries. In the US for example:
This can all be occurring within the Latin alphabet. (I have already mentioned Viet Nam, whose script uses the Latin alphabet. Some Indonesians have mononyms and Bahaha Indonesia uses the Latin alphabet. Singapore, which has a variety of populations, uses English and thus the Latin alphabet. People from these countries who emigrate or even simply travel to the US are forced to follow the US naming format.)
I'm not sure about the situation in European countries, but I suspect similar considerations apply.
Upvote:12
You are conflating many different things, some of which still happen regularly:
But remember that spelling in general (i.e. even for common nouns and other words, not only proper nouns) wasn't always standardized in the way it is today. Another related changed is that many people now know how to write and are expected to fill in forms, etc. Two centuries ago, your name was a spoken word you would tell to a clerk, now it's a written word you have to fill in everywhere. This (much broader) process would seem to readily account for the differences you noted.