Spell My Name with an "S"/Literature

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Examples of Spell My Name with an "S" in Literature include:

  • 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.

Derek: Everyone calls me Hobbie. And I'll get back to you on my last name. Lots of people misspell it.

  • 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.
  • A Certain Magical Index has Laura/Lola. The former spelling has been consistently used by English translators, but a later book confirms that it should in fact be the latter. It's because she is actually Lola Zaza Crowley, based on the historical person of the same name.