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Originally Posted by Matt McIrvin
In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Latin was the international language of scholars in Europe, and most people who wrote about learned topics wrote in Latin and used Latinized versions of their names on their writings. Sometimes they'd use a Latin-sounding name that was phonetically similar (such as Kopernik->Copernicus); other times they'd construct a Latin equivalent that was etymologically related.
So most of the philosophers, alchemists and so forth of the age, including the medieval Arab writers on astronomy and medicine, are still often known by pseudo-Latin versions of their names.
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Notably in lunar craters, whose names were assignd early on by folks thoroughly steeped in the Renaissance Latin-intellectual tradition. Copernicus, Linnaeus, Albategnius, Arzachel, Clavius,... and retroactively to Alphonsus, Ptolemaeus and so on. Most of the Al- and Ar- names started out as Arabic, and lots of others are obvious from the -us ending. The practice was evidently fading in the generation after Copernicus/Kopernik, since we still remember Galilei, Brahe, Kepler.