[Idiom] English idiom wanted to say respect

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Amiko

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English idiom wanted to say respect

Hello, everybody!

I am struggling with the translation of an idiom and I knew there are some great places where people like you gather. So I registered, and I would like to hear your opinion about it. It will be interesting, I promise!

In Hungary, we have a custom that if a very well-known, famous and noted public figure dies, the society he / she was most working with states in a press conference that they "consider him/her as their own dead". That is to say that he/she was such a great man, and he / she was such a pillar of the society, that we are proud that he/she was a member of us - which, coming from an otherwise very respected society, is a form of honour giving. Now I have to translate this idiom to English, and I am struck.

The literal translation, as given above, is nearly unknown in the Google. Is there a matching English idiom to this? Or this is simply a custom unknown in English-speaking countries?

The problem is even more interesting because the text I am working on uses a wordplay on this custom: it says that "we consider him as our own living", meaning that he will be influential and respected forever.

Great stuff, isn't it? :) Thank you in advance!
 
Welcome to Using English.
We are happy to have you, and I'm personally very happy you used capital letters and punctuation. Thank you for that.

I wonder if "We are/were proud to claim him as one of our own" might work.
Or we might say something like "Benjamin Franklin was Philadelphia's favorite son."

Let's see what others suggest.
 
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Sorry for going off-topic, but can I replace "he/she" with "they" and "his/her" with "their"?
Thanks.
 
As for the word play, "our own living", you could say, "And we consider that he continues to remain one of our own".
 
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