Giving myself airs, when speaking Spanish, I identify myself a "Don." Always for laughs and to break the ice, but sort of like you do with Nagy.
Your mention of Hungarian-language Nagy Karoly (Karl ~ Charles) usage has a little-known feature which is the final "y", which [ee] sound reliably indicated noble standing earlier. So
you are not only great but of the nobility!!!
In Hungarian, nagy means big (adj.) and, as you suggest, has been suitably extended in Hungarian usage to Nagy as "the Great".
Yeah about Charlemagne, but it derives from Lat. for "big Karl/Charles" -- Karolus Magnus. This origin in Latin accounts for the similar "Karol" root of the Hungarian name.
My favorite Mr. Big story is from a French newspaper headline in Montreal I saw about "Monsieur Big" whose identity is still not known; he was the brains behind a successful hijack of a gold shipment in the early-mid seventies at Dorval, the Montreal airport. So, the French speak of, say, le Grand Condé as great, including a capital G, but the French have a separate usage taken strictly from English's Mr. Big.
The whole topic is fraught...As I recall, and I am unsure, in Russian, the Prussia-born Catherine the Great is sometimes simply Yekaterina, written with Cyrillic's epsilon/єстъ (but pronounced, [Yay]). However, she is likewise "the Great: Екатерина II Велика. This optional simplification is just like Fredrich is simply Friedrich and also Friedrich der Grosse. And then we have Alexander (the Great). Apparently, if you are great enough, you don't need "the Great," as in Napoleon.
PNagy wrote:
I truly appreciate you thoughtful and useful comments.
I am also impressed that you know my name means "Big," actually "the Great." Charlemagne is Nagy Karoly. Katherine the Great is Nagy Catalan. I tell people my middle name is "the," and that I am great in name only.