Dub Name Change

"Vincent: And you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris? Jules: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese? Vincent: Nah, man, they got the metric system. They wouldn't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is. Jules: What do they call it? Vincent: They call it a "Royale with Cheese"."

- Pulp Fiction.

A Dub Name Change is when one, several, or all the characters have their names drastically changed with the importing of a fictional property.

Usually it's meant to be a Woolseyism, when name changes are made so the audiences of the foreign country can better understand and relate to the characters. Names are also changed to avoid controversial names (or have different meanings in another culture like Mr. Satan), prevent copyright infringement or retain Meaningful or Punny Names that would otherwise be lost in a more pure translation. In the case of video games, these have often come about due to limitations in the number of characters used in a name (Japanese names can be much longer than names written in English). At lot of times though this may just be the translator(s) are being paid for every change they "have" to make to make a work "acceptable" in the west and are trying to milk as much money from their employer as possible. Sometimes not all the names will be translated, leading to Aerith and Bob situations in some cases.

Fans of the original material are likely to get upset about the name changes (and some are legitimate Macekres) but other fans have embraced (or at least tolerated) these name changes. It usually depends on how strong the culture/national pride in the original work comes out, European names on characters who are supposed to be Japanese and from Japan can seem a little odd. As well, some are not actually changes but a romanization or translation that is easier for foreign voice actors to replicate.

For the same name with a different spelling see Spell My Name with an "S". See also Clean Dub Name when it happens to avoid profanity or jokes.

Foreign-to-English Examples

 * French to English
 * Icelandic to English
 * Japanese to English
 * Portuguese to English
 * Swedish to English
 * Hebrew to English

English-to-Foreign Examples

 * English to Dutch
 * English to Finnish
 * English to French
 * English to Gaelic
 * English to German
 * English to Hungarian
 * English to Icelandic
 * English to Iranian
 * English to Italian
 * English to Japanese
 * English to Portuguese
 * English to Polish
 * English to Russian
 * English to Spanish
 * English to Swedish

Foreign-to-Japanese Examples

 * English to Japanese
 * Korean to Japanese
 * Swedish to Japanese

Japanese-to-Foreign Examples

 * Japanese to Chinese
 * Japanese to English
 * Japanese to Filipino
 * Japanese to Finnish
 * Japanese to French
 * Japanese to German
 * Japanese to Greek
 * Japanese to Italian
 * Japanese to Korean
 * Japanese to Portuguese
 * Japanese to Russian
 * Japanese to Spanish
 * Japanese to Swedish

Non-English, Non-Japanese Examples

 * French to Dutch
 * French to German
 * French to Swedish
 * Italian to Welsh
 * Swedish to German
 * Swedish to Finnish
 * Swedish to Icelandic
 * Spanish to Portuguese