The European researcher hired years earlier to extract data from Dutch records in Antwerp reported those results in French, including the use of French orthography for the given names of individuals.  Burton left the names in French orthography when he published his papers, which has had the result that pretty much all American researchers studying the genealogy of Cornelis MELYN, progenitor of this surname in the United States, refer to his ancestors by French versions of their names — names these Dutch ancestors would not themselves have used.

The problem could have been avoided, of course, had the researcher not broken a cardinal rule of data-gathering, which is to always transcribe data verbatim.

Until such time as a MELYN researcher can go to Antwerp and retake these data properly, we are left with two unattractive alternatives:  to continue calling these ancestors by French names they never had or used — and which are misleading as to their ethnicity — or to translate these names back into Dutch, with all the obvious pitfalls that entails.  Of the two alternatives, I prefer the latter.  It can be no less accurate than the former, and may very well be largely correct.  At the very least, it will solve the problem of misleading ethnicity.

Because I do not speak either Dutch or French, for me to compile an "equivalency table" for translating these names is a hazardous undertaking.   The table below is definitely a work in progress.  I welcome input from speakers of these languages — any assistance will be duly credited — and I especially welcome corrections of errors.  I realize that in many cases there are more than just the one equivalent given here, but in each case I am trying to use the single most similar of the various possibilities, in the hopes that it is the closest to the name translated from the Dutch in the first place.  In those cases where the French researcher  appears to have supplied a Dutch diminutive, I would appreciate knowing the non-diminutive Dutch name it represents.  I've highlighted the cells where information is lacking or most questionable.

Dutch and German speakers, especially educated ones, often used Latin versions of their names.  An obvious example below is "Marcus."  If there are any truly Dutch equivalents of these names, I would appreciate knowing them.

My point in going to all this trouble is that I am building family group sheets of these ancestors, which are being linked to a Cornelis MELYN Home Page, and I did not want to perpetuate the erroneous use of French names for these Dutch ancestors. 

There were a number of names in Burton (mostly witnesses to baptisms), which appeared to be Spanish (viz., Antonio Fernando de Castilio, Alonso de Piralta, and Gaspar de Povellodo).  I left these unchanged on the family group sheets, along with a few French given names that also had French-appearing surnames.