I met some yesterday who, while in conversation, mentioned that the name 'Aiden' is similar to 'John'. Clearly this is wrong, but when you hear 'Cormac 'and 'Charles' are the same, you have to wonder where such nonsense comes from.

My intuition is that it stems from books from the 19th century

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__̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡̡.___

I wonder if they had "Aiden" confused with "Eoin" or "Ian" (both of which are forms of the Hebrew name that became "John" in English).

As far as "Cormac" (and more frequently, "Cathal") goes, I suspect it's because "Charles" was the name most often assigned to boys with those names by the English schoolmasters (the same mechanism by which you get people saying that "Sorcha is Irish for Sarah" or "Gráinne is Irish for Grace").

Redwolf