This paper investigates some aspects of people names in translation. After examining proper names within a theoretical framework which views translation as cross-cultural communication, it explores three phenomena in English: lexicalised eponyms in both general language and specialized discourse; people names as cultural allusions; proper names in idioms. The paper focuses on the linguistic and cultural problems posed by the rendering of English anthroponyms into Italian and discusses the strategies to solve them. The data examined are taken from general-purpose as well as specialist monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, and from authentic texts belonging to various genres.