Sikander Stiller
The Indian marketing team for Ben Stiller’s Night at the Museum renamed the flick Museum Ke Andar Phans Gaya Sikander (Alexander Got Stuck Inside the Museum). Stiller’s character is actually named Larry, but Alexander/Sikandar is slang for conqueror/badass, and rhymes besides.
The title [of an older film, Muqaddar Ka Sikandar] means “Conqueror of destiny,” but it is also a play on words - the work “sikandar,” conqueror, derives from the name of Alexander the Great, and is also the name of the film’s main character. The wordplay is not without irony, destiny arguably conquers Sikandar rather than the other way round. [Link]
[Alexander] is known as Sikandar in Urdu and Hindi, a term also used as a synonym for “expert” or “extremely skilled”. [Link]
Sikander is also a key character in Vikram Chandra’s Red Earth and Pouring Rain.
on Monday, December 25th, 2006, 2:57 pm in Film, History, Musings › 
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Hey, nice post. Thanks for quoting me!
I think it is completely fascinating the way marketing adapts across cultures. The name “Alexander” doesn’t really have any of the connotations in U.S. English that “Sikandar” has in Hindi. There may have been a time when it did, when classical education was more emphasized in the U.S. than it is now; then, educated people might have associated the name with Alexander the Great. But I just don’t think that happens reliably today.
I noticed a couple of typos in the segment you quoted - why couldn’t I have spotted them before you quoted me! - so I fixed them in the original post. :)