Spell My Name with an "S"

"The English Romanization of his name was a debated topic for quite some time, with interpretations including "Violenjiger", "Violent Jiger", "Violent Chigger", "Violen Jig-er", "Violin Juggler", "Bio Ranger Iga", "Valium Chugger", and "Crazy Engrish Fun-Man". The publication of The Ark II finally provided us with an official spelling."

- TFWiki.net

This trope describes characters whose names are almost never spelled consistently, usually because of transliteration issues. This tends to happen in Anime and Japanese video games that haven't been officially translated into English, although it also crops up in other languages that don't use the Latin alphabet. Situations include anything from drama between vowel additions to unique-cipher dropping, due to phoneme sets and writing systems. English, for example, is famous for many ways and rules of spelling (e.g., Americans generally dropping extra vowels), despite having much fewer actual sounds they represent. Japanese have separate vowel-heavy phonetic and symbolic alphabets; since the latter overlaps with Chinese, sometimes there is a question of whether a name should be transliterated from the Japanese or the Chinese reading. Spanish has several familiar looking letter combinations intended to be pronounced in specific ways. Complicating the issue is some names simply become popular enough in other languages that they're modified to fit them better, and you can't be sure if it's actually intended to be meaningful. Another if the name is only ever shown in modified form, meaning we simply have to guess.

Assuming an official release settles the issue, some fans deliberately use one of the alternate spellings to establish their "credibility" as fans. In true fannish fashion, this often persists even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, such as Theme Naming, Meaningful Names, Prophetic Names and direct proclamations by the work's creator. Eventually, this stops being cool and just starts making people angry, and the self-righteous morons get Gannon Banned. (Where did you think the trope name came from?)

In some cases, official translated versions will adopt bizarre transliterations for the sake of Writing Around Trademarks and/or establishing new ones -- because, when a Cash Cow Franchise gets imported, it's more useful to have character names that can be trademarked for the sake of selling licensed merchandise.

This can also occur in translations of ancient texts written in outdated forms of modern scripts. For example, Latin had no "J," but, as English has no consonantal "I," "J" is often used to signify such. To a lesser extent, this can occur when transliterating words that contain a thorn (þ), which is already well represented by "TH." In point of fact, it can even be seen in many English texts from before standardized spelling (yes, there was such a time), won ecksampel beeing þis fras. And anoþre beeing þis sentans. Þis won heer is a partickularlie gud ecksampel.

The trope's name comes from an Isaac Asimov short story, Spell My Name With An S, in which a pair of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens use The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday to stop The End of the World As We Know It -- by persuading an obscure scientist to change one letter of his name from Z to S, and watching Hilarity Ensue (until they realize that The Watcher will know that there was supposed to be an Earthshattering Kaboom, and so are forced to come up with an equally subtle Reset Button). Asimov was inspired to write the story after having his name misspelled -- Azimov, or even Asenion once -- one time too many. Incidentally, Isaac Asimov's original name in the Cyrillic alphabet was "Исаак Оссимов" and pronounced quite differently from how the American public and he himself pronounced it during his lifetime. Now in Russia, translations of his works use the spelling of "Айзек Азимов" to better convey the American English phonetics, out of the respect for the author.

This does not include minor differences in romanization systems, such as the various methods of indicating long vowels in Japanese, or the use of the apostrophe to indicate syllabic nasals.

Contrast My Nayme Is, which is the intentional misspelling of one's name.

The opposite of No Pronunciation Guide, which is when the spelling/writing of the name is unequivocal but people can't agree on how it's supposed to sound.

May lead to a Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?.

Related to Adaptation Dye Job and Adaptation Decay (and/or other Adaptation Tropes, as the case may be).

Sections so big that they have their own pages:


 * Anime and Manga
 * Real Life
 * Video Games

Fanfic

 * Parodied in Those Lacking Spines, where when facing down a rabid group of Fangirls the main characters invoke this trope by getting them to fight over the spelling of Final Fantasy VII character names, ranging from the classic Aeris/Aerith to eventually Gratuitous Japanese like Vincent/Binsento.
 * My Immortal. Who can forget the many spellings of Ebony's name: Enoby, Evony, TaEbory, Tata, Tara...
 * Starkits Prophecy features a wide variety of misspellings of character names. At times, it's hard to tell what the correct spelling of a character's name is supposed to be.
 * As such, it's impossible to tell if the character "Soul," who shows up in the last chapter for no apparent reason, is supposed to be Sol or not.
 * Parodied in “The Labyrinth Fanfic Academy” when writers of bad Labyrinth fanfiction are forcibly restrained by sets of Helping Hands nicknamed “Sara” (Sarah), “Jereth” (Jareth), “Pluto” (Ludo), and “Hoggel” (Hoggle).
 * Similar to My Immortal, Naruto Veangance Revelaitons often spells Taliana as "Taline", and the main character Ronan's name as "Jonan", "Jake", and others.

Films
""It's 'Gojira', you moron!""
 * Practically any monster from a Godzilla movie -- including Godzilla (originally Gojira) himself.
 * Angirasu/Angilas/Angurus/Anguirus (the last finally being registered as a trademark in the 90s).
 * Kingu Gidora/Ghidrah/Ghidorah; also Death Ghidorah/Desgidora.
 * In almost all English versions except Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1993), the monster Radon (from "pteranodon") is called Rodan. Speculation as to why it was changed includes confusion with the element radon and a conflict with the name of a British brand of soap; nobody's exactly sure why.
 * Kingu Shiisaa/King Seesar/King Caesar -- especially problematic because it implies a false Meaningful Name (Caesar = Roman emperors) while clouding its real one (Shiisaa = Okinawan mythic lion-dog).
 * In Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, the monster's name was deliberately changed from "Destroyer" because a descriptive name like that is hard to trademark.
 * Also, Destoroyah has been called Destroyah.
 * Don't forget about Minya/Minilla/Minira/Milla.
 * Likewise there's Kamacuras/Gimantis and Kumonga/Spiega.
 * It is Lampshaded in the American remake.


 * And referred to exclusively as "Gojira" in the accompanying novelization.
 * In Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings, Executive Meddling led to Saruman's name being changed to Aruman, because the studio thought that viewers would confuse his name with "Sauron". However they only used the new name about half the time, making everything that much more confusing.
 * The potential for confusion between their names is actually noted in the universe -- while viewing an 'S' painted on an enemy's shield, one of the characters wonders if it stands for Sauron; another character quickly points out that Sauron's minions don't call him by name, and besides, Sauron never uses elf-runes. So it could only be Saruman.
 * In Animal Crackers, Captain Spaulding has the first name of "Jeffrey" in the film credits and in the script of the play, but "Geoffrey" in a newspaper headline also displayed at the start of the film. (Spaulding's name originally lacked the U, but was changed to avoid coincidental resemblance to persons living or dead.)
 * Randall Graves is not a clerk at RST Video. Randal Graves, however, is.
 * Depending on the source, the heroine of King Kong spells her name as either Ann or Anne.
 * The tablet owner from Night At the Museum's name is popularly spelled Ahkmenrah, but other spellings exists as well. In the Nintendo DS Licensed Game of the movie's sequel, they added the spelling "Akmenrah" and "Akhmenrah", which was mentioned during the beginning, when Jedediah called Larry on the phone.
 * Blazing Saddles: It's HEDLEY!
 * The Hangover: Is it rufilin or roofalin?

Literature
"Derek: Everyone calls me Hobbie. And I'll get back to you on my last name. Lots of people misspell it."
 * The Star Wars Expanded Universe is known for being remarkably consistent and continuous, as expanded universes go. However, there are plenty of times, particularly early on, when authors don't bother looking up things like whether characters have already had first/last names or specific spellings. This is usually retconned by giving some characters either two first names or a middle name. Derek "Hobbie" Klivian, whose name was frequently misspelled "Klivan", lampshades this in Starfighters of Adumar by telling a reporter this.


 * Night Watch - in the books, the head of the Day Watch is romanised as Zabulon, while the movies spell it Zavulon. They also can't agree on Egor or Yegor.
 * Different volumes of the series also variably spell the name of the head of the Night Watch as Gesar or Geser.
 * Another Asimov short story, "Unto the Fourth Generation," is centered on variations of Levkovich (Lewkovich, Lefkovitz, and so on) and a peculiar form of sort-of time travel. Mostly, it's about family, as the name suggests.
 * Animal Farm has Mollie/ Molly.
 * The title character of the Anne of Green Gables series is constantly reminding people that she prefers her named to be spelled with an E. Apparently, it looks more dignified. She is so adamant that at various points, she will introduce herself as "Anne Shirley. Anne spelled with an 'E'". Of course, this is after she requests to be called Cordelia....
 * The Badass Spaniard's name in the book The Princess Bride is written "Inigo Montoya", thus the preferred spelling in the English-speaking world. A Spaniard will be quick to point out that it should be written "Íñigo" (and in fact, Inigo would be pronounced like e-nee-goh, while for Íñigo, you stress the Í, and you pronounce the ñ like in... um... thñis). And will write it as Íñigo.
 * Iñigo if he/she's not bothering with the accents. Inigo only if the keyboard is broken or something.
 * For browsers who can't display this name correctly: Inigo is properly written as: I with acute accent, N with tilde, I, G, O.
 * Whenever the main character of Bill the Galactic Hero interacts with those of higher rank than him, they insist on calling him "Bil" because only officers have two L's.
 * George R.R. Martin loves this trope. In "A Song of Ice and Fire" one can see Jaime (Jamie), Eddard (Edward), Brynden (Brendan), and many more
 * However, this may be justified in the fact that many of these names come from the language of the First Men.

Live Action TV

 * There are multiple possible ways to spell the surnames of the Second Doctor's companions Jamie and Zoe (the credits only show their first names). Jamie's surname has largely stabilised as "McCrimmon", but Zoe's has swung back and forth between "Heriot" and "Herriot" over the years. The BBC's own Doctor Who episode guide uses both spellings on different pages.
 * In the American version of The Office, Pam's last name has had several different spellings.
 * In Stargate SG 1, Colonel O'Neill has very specifically stated that his name is spelled with two Ls on several occasions. At one point he specifically addressed why he was so concerned about it. Apparently, there's another Colonel Jack O'Neil in the fictional version of the USAF, one with "No Sense of Humor". This is an in-joke and lampshading of the fact that Kurt Russell's version of the character in the movie (spelled with one L in the credits) was significantly less funny.
 * For the record, the name of Daniel's wife in the movie was Shau'ri, while in the series was spelled Sha're. The pronunciation changed accordingly.
 * Jack similarly corrects the spelling of Teal'c's name during the first episode following the series pilot.
 * Major Dr. Janet Frasier, the base doctor, says the trope name verbatim in a featurette on the DVD release of Season Three. (Yes, this does count: the featurette is framed with the audience in the role of a consultant for the Pentagon, and Gen. Hammond and Dr. Frasier are in character.)
 * The latest Super Sentai series, Go-Onger, has some possible variations on the name of the species of biomechanical creatures that act as the rangers' familiars/HumongousMecha. Most commonly rendered simply as Engines, the name is actually a bilingual pun on the English word & the Japanese En-Jin, roughly meaning Fire God. Another possible rendering is Endjinn or N-Djinn, which arguably conveys the pun better to a western audience.
 * Lizzi in Greek is one the producers always get right. The fans, critics, and non-Greek personnel, however, usually add the "e" at the end.
 * "That's Lizzi with two Zeta Beta Z's...and no 'e'"
 * It's either Wesley Wyndam-Pryce or Wesley Wyndham-Price... or possibly Wesley Wyndam-Price. Just take your pick...
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer had similar issues regarding the spelling of Warren's surname, since it never appeared in the credits. The comic spin-offs have now confirmed it as "Mears", although at least one published shooting script had previously given it as "Meers", and much fanon had it as "Meres" to make it a Punny Name for a character defined by his rage at being a "mere" human.
 * Godric from True Blood has been given every spelling possible: Godrick, Godrich, Godrik, Goderic, Goderick, Goderich, etc.
 * Demetri Noh on FlashForward gets this a lot (even on TV Tropes): Dimitri, Demitri, Dmitri, Dimetri, etc. Good thing his last name's pretty easy.
 * In 24, the name of Jack Bauer's brother was spelled "Graham" on the show's captions before the official website revealed that it's actually "Graem".
 * The Survivors frequently slaughter the spellings of each others' names at Tribal Council. To give one example, Sonja Christopher's name was misspelled as "Souna" on the first ever Tribal Council vote.
 * Fans of The Kids in The Hall disagree bitterly over the recurring garage band, Rod Torfulson/Torkelson/Torfasson/etc.'s Armada Featuring Herman Menderchuck.
 * Is it Nazca like the lines, or Nasca like it says on the memory? It's still pronounced the same either way, but still...
 * Every incarnation of the Degrassi franchise spells it as one word. Real Life De Grassi Street in Toronto is two words, capital "G". The real street signs are used in establishing shots from time to time.
 * No one ever decided whether the Alpha Bitch's name in Lizzie Mcguire was Kate Sanders (with a short a sound) or Kate Saunders (Sawn-ders). Every other episode, it was pronounced differently and her name was never listed the same way in the credits. Ethan Kraft/Ethan Craft is similar in this way.
 * Monty Python's Flying Circus: Raymond Luxury-Yacht's name is apparently pronounced as "Throat Warbler Mangrove"!

Music

 * The Japanese band Bow Wow later switched the Latin spelling of their name to Vow Wow. This might have been to avoid confusion with another band named Bow Wow Wow.
 * It's Liza with a Z, not Lisa with an S.
 * Most of her CDs Romanize her name "Shéna Ringö", but she's gone through plenty of other Romanizations, so almost nobody humors her and instead goes for the literal Romanization, Shiina Ringo.
 * Florence and the Machine, or Florence and The Machine, or even Florence + the machine? Nobody can decide.
 * Woven Hand or Wovenhand? He's released albums as both.
 * Longtime Christian music artist Sandi Patty was a subversion for much of her career, as her last name was spelled with an "i" at the end due to a typographical error.
 * An In Living Color sketch featured a man whose spelled out his name as (approximately) "Q, E, P, H, F, E, N, N, N, N ... N." He then revealed that it was pronounced "Kevin".
 * Keri Hilson, Kerri Hilson, or Kerry Hilson?  Someone might even go as far to spell it Kari Hilson.

Religion and Mythology

 * Nobody seems to know whether "Xenu" or "Xemu" is the correct spelling. At least, nobody who's willing to talk about it.
 * The name of Óðinn/Odin/Oden/Woden/Wotan is spelled differently in basically every Germanic language. This is in part due to Norse having a distinct letter ð for the voiced "th" sound, transliterated in modern English sometimes as th and sometimes as d, and in most Scandinavian languages as dh or d. And the Romans called him Mercury
 * There's also Freyja/Freya/Freia/Freja/Frøya/Freyia.
 * God. He's OK with being called God, since it's clear that He's the only one to which a Christian or Jew would refer, but... YHVH or YHWH? Is the name more closely Anglicized as Yahweh, Jehovah, or something in between? It's not supposed to be pronounced. Nobody but the high priest knew how the word is pronounced, and even modern religious Jews misspell it on purpose because they're not allowed to write it. There is some debate about what exactly the word means, but it's likely related to the root 'to exist'.
 * The way I heard it, it is supposed to represent the sound of breathing. Something about the symbolism of all living things praising his name at all times or something.
 * Arthurian Legend: Guinevere can be Guenever, Gwenwhyfar, Guanhumara (!), or Wenneuereia (Flat What). Similarly for Isolde / Iseult / Isolt / whatever.
 * It can also be Jennifer or Ginevra.
 * The obscure Catholic Saint Winwaloe. Or possibly Guénolé, Winwallus, Guingalois, or Vinguavally. Or maybe Ouignoualey, or Bennoc, or dozens more.
 * The name of the legendary hero of Greek mythology can be spelled either as Herakles or Heracles. That Other Wiki seems to prefer the latter, as does the Glory of Heracles video game series.
 * There are multiple accepted ways to write "Hanukkah" in Roman letters.

Stand-up Comedy

 * Achmed the Dead Terrorist, spell his name with A-C-* Phlegm* ...
 * Brivolbn7q Regan: "Anyway I met his woman, her name was ah, Amy, you know, so I go 'Oh, A-M-Y?' She goes 'No, A-Y-M-I-E'. 'Ughhh... I have to take a nap! I'm Brian, B-R-I-V-O-L-B-N, the number 7, the letter Q, -- 'Brennemenahgah!!!' Look at my name tag, it's, it's big."

Theater

 * The play "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" had audience members spell words. Sometimes audience members would be given the word "kumis", fermented goat milk. If the audience member spelled the word c-u-m-i-s, the announcer would say the correct spelling was k-u-m-i-s (both spellings are correct).
 * This could be deliberate, as half the comedy in the show derives from the announcer trying to eliminate audience members at any cost.
 * The Merchant of Venice contains a character called, depending on the editor, "Launcelot" or "Lancelot." This doesn't seem so bad...except that the folios call him "Launcelet" or "Lancelet", and spell his last name, Gobbo, alternately as "Jobbe" or "Job."

Web Comics

 * A minor character in Men in Hats was called Ramath the first and only time he appeared, and called Ramas in the only other strip to refer to him.
 * Order of the Stick's prequel book, Start of Darkness, revolves around the villains and often has the main villain, Xykon, correcting other people's misspelling of his name (most commonly as Zykon). It's unclear how he can recognize this, since both names are pronounced the same way, which is also lampshaded. Also, a group of adventurers attempting to hunt Xykon down wind up stumbling into the lair of a completely different villain with a similarly-spelled name. It is believed that this was author Rich Burlew's way of poking fun at the constant misspelling of Xykon's name in the comic's fan forums.
 * Additionally, one of the spirits involved in Vaarsuvius's Soul Splice has been referred to in the comic as both "Haera Bloodsoak" and "Haerta Bloodsoak". There has been no indication of which of these is supposed to be correct.
 * For some strange reason, some forum goers tend to misspell Haley's name as Hayley.
 * Nothing Nice To Say has a character referred to by the comic strip's creator as outside the comic as a variation of "Chris or Charlie or whatever" due to the interchangeability of his names within the strip.
 * The above mentioned Aeris/Aerith controversy is mentioned in this Loserz strip.
 * In the webcomic Blue and Blond, Blond is able to tell when people refer to him as "Blonde". Whenever this happens, it always annoys him.
 * The Blobby minion in Building 12 has had his name written as both Slauf and Slough.
 * Apparently part of the Sluggy Freelance fanbase regularly spells Gwynn's name as "Gwen". Which is odd because not only are those two really pronounced differently, but you're reading it in the comic, not listening to it. But there you go. This may have been spoofed in the comic itself when Gwynn was being referred to as Gwen to thinly disguise her identity.
 * Also odd since the correct spelling of her name has plot relevance -- since Y is only sometimes a vowel, you could say that her name has no vowels at all,  Also? That's the worst pickup line in the history of the world.
 * Drow Tales. Is it Snadhya'runes or Snadhya'rune? Ven'nedia or Ven'ndia? No one knows...
 * Slightly Damned. 'Carrie Susan' is a fairly reasonable attempt at 'Kieri Suizahn', all things considered.
 * Shadowgirls; Charon's name is pronounced "Sharon". Naturally, people tend to spell it with the standard "S."

Western Animation
While it wouldn't seem hard to deduce that her name's
 * While most uncertainties relating to Transformers names are of Japanese origin, there's a few pure Western examples.
 * Elita One has had her name spelled Elita-One, Elita-1, Eleta-1 and Aleta-1 officially, and a couple of more variations unofficially. This confusion was brought on because of her debute in an unwritten medium, so people could only guess what it was spelled like. Given how much the cartoon made a point of her being equal to Optimus Prime, it is somewhat odd (the correct) Elita One (Prime/One, get it?) was dismissed as a viable option for so long, although the Orion Pax-Optimus Prime & Elita One-Ariel link understandably caused "Alita"-confusion. Since those days, script material and the production bible have become available to reveal her name as Elita One, but for varying reasons her name continues to be a source of debate. Most noticeably in that is that other franchise incarnations of Elita One have their names spelled differently: Elita-One for the Movie and Transformers Shattered Glass versions and Elita-1 for the Transformers Animated and Revenge of the Fallen versions, which may lead to trademark claims that affect the name under which another Elita One version is released.
 * A similar thing happened with the computer "Teletraan I", also debuting in the cartoon. Aside from the spelling, its pronunciation also varied to include "Teletron-1", a fact that was lampshaded in the series finale of Beast Wars.
 * Hun-Grrr has had about four different spellings of his name: Hun-Gurrr, Hun-Grrr, Hun-Grr and Hun-Garr. Canon seems to have settled on the most meaningful (guy's got some violent eating habits): Hun-Grrr.
 * Not to mention Tarantulus/Tarantulas from Beast Wars.
 * The former spelling is the most recently used as it's a a trademark dodge, since "Tarantulas" can be interpreted as the plural of "tarantula" and thus couldn't be trademarked.
 * The Five-Man Band's resident computer geek in Code Lyoko is Jeremy Belpois. Or was it... Jérémie Belpois? Apparently, either spelling is acceptable, and fans of the series accept either spelling equally.
 * It doesn't help that within the show itself, in his specific Eyecatch it is spelled "JEREMIE" in Season 1 and "JEREMY" starting Season 2.
 * The name of a character from the underrated movie Help! I'm a Fish... Is it Fly or Kai?
 * Yes, the first one is meaningful. He turns into a flyfish once he drinks the fish potion.
 * From The Fairly Odd Parents: Juandissimo Magnifico's first name begins with either "Ju" or "W", but even the end credits and the people making the merchandise aren't sure.
 * Official production art from the Frederator Blog, as well as a draft script for "Wishology" refer to him as Juandissimo. Maybe that will clear things up.
 * Meanwhile, lots of "fans" seem to think Vicky's name is spelled "Vicki", despite "The Villain Sucks" Song clearly spelling it out at the beginning.
 * Considering that the character is either a Spaniard or Latino, his first name most likely derives from the Spanish name "Juan," making Juandissimo correct. Besides, ask any Spanish speaker how often they use "j" vs. "w" on a daily basis.
 * However, this interpretation ignores the fact that "Wandissimo" is a pun off of "wand", which fits with the theme of the other fairy characters' names.
 * Neither interpretation makes sense in a vacuum. "Juandissimo" ignores the "wand" pun and "Wandissimo" ignores the "Juan" pun. The question should not be which preserves the pun, because neither do.
 * Mind you, the fact is that if the name is based in spanish neither names makes sense as it it would Juanissimo, and as the pun doesn't work it seems like a case of Did Not Do the Research
 * As well, Timmy Turner's Dad's Sitcom Arch Nemesis family is spelled as both Dinkleberg and Dinkleburg.
 * Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers fans can't seem to decide on one spelling for the name of Gadget's Hawaiian lookalike. Apparently, the official spelling is "Lahwhinie", but it was never stated anywhere that the audience was likely to see it, and several variations are in common use amongst fans of the show.
 * A recurring visual gag in Home Movies is that Jason's last name is spelled differently every time its shown. The spellings "Panopolis", "Popodopolis", or "Penopopolis" had all been used throughout the show and the close captions for one episode even spells it "Penopolis".
 * Mr. Lynch's first name was revealed in one scene to be "Ronald" and in another scene to be "Donald". Both scenes occurred on the very same episode.
 * The name of Brendon Small's metalhead friend who composes most of the music in Brendo's movies is either, "Dwayne" or "Duane".
 * Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! fans have several spellings for their red monkey's name, both his full name and the nickname. SPRX-77, SPRX 77, Sprx, Sparks, Sparx, and there are probably a few more spellings if one looked around the fanfic archives long enough.
 * Fievel in An American Tail, who is listed as "Feivel" in the beginning credits of the first movie, which is the actual Yiddish spelling. The spelling was changed to "Fievel" to avoid confusing American audiences who might otherwise pronounce it as "Fay-vel", but in other countries where the movie was released the "Feivel" spelling was left intact.
 * Ironic because that's actually how it's pronounced in Yiddish too.
 * Kyle's surname in South Park is usually Broflovski, but it has appeared as Brovlofski, Broflofski and Broflowski.
 * While the show is notorious for discontinuity, perhaps falls under the inconsistent spelling rules of names from slavic nations into English.
 * Charles Foster Ofdensen/Offdensen/Ofdenson from Metalocalypse. Fans are starting to think Brendon Small is fucking with them on purpose.
 * After two seasons, Charles Foster Offdensen's name was revealed by Word of God to be spelled with TWO f's instead of one, rendering most spellings of his name in fanworks (and on this very wiki) incorrect.
 * From the same series, Mr. Salatcia/Selatcia/Salacia/Selacia/who freaking knows. And unlike Offdensen, there are no written confirmations one way or the other.
 * The surname Doofenshmirtz does not have a C in it.
 * The Intern, Carl, was also inconsistently spelled with a "K" during the credits. However, a later episode confirmed his name was in fact Carl, and later episodes finally began using his full name in the credits: "Carl Karl."
 * In Avatar: The Last Airbender the character names are in the credits (and for Aang, in the British title) but that doesn't mean that their names will occasionally go mis-spelt as 'Eyroh', 'Touf', 'Socka' and other wacky spellings.
 * In the Powerpuff Girls episode Superfriends, the titular 'puffs make friends with the daughter of their new next-door neighbours. She's only in the one episode, but has become a feature of many PPG fanfics (probably because of convenience, she does live right next door to them). But even ten years on, fanon still can't decide if her name is spelt Robin Schneider or Robyn Snyder (or anything in between).
 * It's Robin Shneider in the credits and book adaptation, so that's the official spelling.
 * People constantly spell Lois from Family Guy name as Louis despite the fact that Louis is pronounced quite differently than Lois.
 * Nobody quite knows whether the name of Twilight's avian companion in the "Owl's Well That Ends Well" episode of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic is Owlysius, Owlowicious, Owloysius, Owloicious or just plain Aloysius (without the pun on "owl.") Very unlikely to be resolved since he only speaks in hoots, so he has no voice actor (and thus no credit) and Twilight probably gave him that name, and the Equestrian script is an equine-themesed Wingdinglish.
 * For the record, Lauren Faust has stated on her Deviant ART account that it is intended to be spelled "Owlowicious."
 * Likewise McIntosh has spelling problems. "McIntosh" is the official spelling of the apple, which would work well for a pun. However most people are more well accustomed with "Macintosh" due to Apple's computer series. Both versions are pronounced the same way, so Fanon latched onto "Macintosh". Apparently Lauren Faust spells it the apple way though.
 * But the toys still say "Macintosh."
 * Honestly, this show alone has a lot of them. To add to the list:
 * Is it Night Mare Moon or Nightmare Moon?
 * Is it Pinky Pie or Pinkie Pie? (This one is a bit less ambiguous, as all official show material says "Pinkie", but some of The Merch says "Pinky."
 * Is it Princess Cadance or Princess Cadence?
 * And probably the most debatable, Discord's species. Spelled dragonokis on The Hub's website, and draconequis in the closed captions. Faust's preferred spelling is draconequus. Better yet, Celestia decides to Take A Fourth Option and refer to him as a "spirit."
 * Applejack's little sister is Apple Bloom. Two words. Many, many people spell it as Applebloom instead, though.
 * The short-lived official website of My Dad the Rock Star spelled the name of Willy's female friend as Alissa. Everyone else spelled it as Alyssa, which stuck given that the original site is no longer around and had low traffic when it was.
 * The premise of the TV show My Gym Partners a Monkey was that Adam's last name was misspelled as Lion instead of Lyon, which is why he got sent to a school of animals.
 * Happens a few time regarding the Recess characters:
 * The official spelling of T.J.'s last name is Detweiler, though Urban Dictionary (as part of the definition for Whomp) spells it as "Detwhiler"
 * Gus's last name is spelled Griswald in most episodes and on the merchandise. However, in two episodes, and to a few fans, it's "Griswold".
 * The official name for the filing assistant boy is Menlo. Some fans continue to spell it as "Menlow".
 * One of the biggest examples of the trope comes to the gang's fourth grade teacher. The correct spelling of her last name, as seen in the credits and merchandise is "Grotke", NOT "Grotky", "Grotkey", or "Grotki".