Spell My Name with an "S"/Video Games

• Main
• Analysis
• Laconic
• Quotes
• All Subpages
• Create New

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

• "Aeris vs. Aerith" from Final Fantasy VII is a canonical example that can spawn enough Internet Backdraft to melt the polar icecaps. It is always romanized as "Aerith" in Japan and used internationally in more current works, and some fans even use Earisu (the phonetic transliteration of the Japanese writing, エアリス). Aerith was subsequently chosen as a romanization because it sounds like "earth" when romanized, something that Word of God [1] confirmed at the time of the game's release in Japan. "Aeris" was chosen for the first English release because Sony handled the English release and their team felt it sounded better. Things got complicated by Square once they took over localization of their own titles again - by the time of Kingdom Hearts, Square had switched it back to "Aerith" outside of Japan. Some fans (including the ones editing Wikipedia and Final Fantasy Wiki) have struck a sort of compromise and use "Aeris" in regards to the game Final Fantasy VII and as "Aerith" when referring to all other games she appears in. If the game ever is remade, one can only guess how Square and their long-suffering fanbase will handle it.
  • It doesn't help that "Aeris" is a Latin word with many other connotations that could be reasonably applied to the character, though these were unintentional since even the Japanese developers intended to get the "earth" homophone (and early concept art shows other spellings such as "Erith"). For example, try reading the Planet Eris trope without thinking of Aerith.
  • In Spain, Sephiroth was spelled "Sefirot", which is the Spanish name for the Kabbalah term the character is named after. However, just like with Aerith, Square's localization team changed his name to the Japanese romanization in later games.
    • Also, "Safer Sephiroth" and "Bizarro Sephiroth" were supposed to be romanized as "Seifer Sephiroth" and "Rebirth Sephiroth" respectively, which were intended as further references to Sephiroth's name origin. Many still love using the original names mostly because of the ironically funny naming, but they don't want to be confused with another similar character called "Seifer."
  • It was sometimes believed that Aerith and Cloud were meant to be "Alice" and "Claude".
  • Is Tifa's last name spelled Lockhart or Lockheart?
  • Another two weird examples are Zack and Rufus - while their names sound like perfectly acceptable English names, they don't match with the Japanese romanizations - Zakkusu and Rūfausu, which would be pronounced Zacks and Rufaus (rhymes with "house") respectively. Also, Barret (Baretto) is a play on the Japanese pronunciation of "Bullet".
• Some names of Tales of Symphonia characters were changed or spelled differently for the western release. Examples: Collet Brunel (became Colette in the translation) and Shihna Fujibayashi (who became Sheena). Genius Sage and Refill Sage got their names changed to Genis and Raine respectively. Also, the place names Asgard, Palmacosta, Luin and Hima were Ascard, Parumacosta, Ruin and Haima in the original (though Asgard makes more sense, as it most likely refers to Ásgarðr, a place in Norse mythology).
  • The Fan Translation names from Tales of Phantasia are still in use, with fans outright rejecting the English names after waiting a decade for an English release. There are some legitimate objections to parts of them, in particular "Kangaroo" instead of "Ragnarok," and also that spellings like "Cless" and "Klarth" are used in all the Japanese source, such as manual graphics and even in the credits to the PS remake of the game.
    • It doesn't help that the fan translation got their original names for the main characters from an article in Nintendo Power in the 90s that was profiling the Japanese version, back when the game was brand new. Apparently Nintendo completely changed their minds on their romanizations a decade later when they took over .
    • On the other hand, "Cress" is a perfectly valid romanisation and fits with Mint for some Theme Naming (both cress and mint are plants), so one could easily argue Cress was the intended name.
  • This is a recurring thing in the Tales (series), really. Namco usually changes names in the American version of a game; sometimes they do it for no reason (as any Destiny fan could tell you), but mostly they do it because the original names were just "Western-sounding", not genuinely western. For example (but definitely not limited to), Leon Magnus, whose Japanese name was Lion Magnus; while Lion sounds silly when read in English, in Japanese it is read the exact same way "Leon" is read here. The same applied to many, many games. It has been toned down in recent installments (for example, Tales of Vesperia), probably because the writers started doing some research.
• Seifer of Final Fantasy VIII was サイファー Saifā in Japanese, so the English romanization seems straightforward. The German version, however, compared the other characters' names (which are all either vaguely English-sounding and spelled accordingly or downright English words) and went for Cifer. "Seife" being the German word for "soap" might also have played a role in the decision. In a similar vein, Zell is Xell in Germany. "Zelle" means "cell".
• Because Final Fantasy V went a long time without an official translation, the fan translations tended to disagree on what the English equivalent of "Kururu" was, the most popular alternative being "Cara". Square eventually translated it as "Krile".
  • And then, of course, there's Butz/Bartz. It is still romanized as "Butz" in Japan, though most English speakers call him "Bartz" considering the alternative (that and his name has always been translated as such officially).
  • The villain's name being Exdeath or Exodus seems to be an issue, but it should be noted that everything that's "Exdeath" in English is Ekusudesu (エクスデス) in Japanese; meanwhile, everything that's "Exodus" is Ekusodasu (エクソダス). However, he has been referred to as "Ex-Death" or "X-Death" before settling on "Exdeath".
  • Lenna/Lena/Reina has two official English names and one fan name. Square was rather indecisive about her.
    • To clarify, her name (written as Rena in Japanese) was Reina in the Anthology version, and then changed to Lenna in the Advance version. Given the Japanese pronunciation of her name, Lenna seems to make more sense.
  • While Galuf has always been Galuf, the other three Warriors of Dawn have been very inconsistent; Bartz's father was originally dubbed "Dorgan" in the fan translation and "Drogan" in the PS 1 release, before becoming "Dorgann" in the GBA translation. The werewolf has been called "Kelgar", "Kelga", and "Kelgore" before becoming "Kelger". Finally, the king of Surgate has been "Zezae" or "Zeza" before becoming "Xezat". One name translation that everyone agrees on, however, is that Faris's real name is "Sarisa" and NOT "Salsa".
  • Its sequel, the OVA Legend of the Crystals naturally follows in its footsteps. "Bartz" is referred to as "Batz," while Exdeath is "Exodese," and "Cid" is rendered as "Shido." The English dub is even internally inconsistent, as the main male character's name is rendered as first "Prettz" and later "Pritz" by the opening text in different episodes.
• Final Fantasy IV has a character named "Rydia". Some fans have thought this was a mistranslation of Lydia. Square Enix has never used any other English spelling, though.
  • Square's handling of Final Fantasy IV's translations are... spotty, at best. These are the same Japanese-version romanizations that give us "Gilbart" (instead of Gilbert, known in the translation as Edward), "Cain" (instead of Kain), and various other spelling differences.
• Rinoa from Final Fantasy VIII is a similar case, in that some fans have argued her name should be Lenore. A few fan-run websites initially translated her name as "Lenore" before an official romanization was released. Again, Square Enix artwork from before the US release contradicts this.
  • • Lenor is a fabric conditioner in the UK and parts of Europe. The equivalent US product is Downy. Whether this was considered by Square's translation team is unknown, but probably not. Still, releasing the game in the UK with the character named "Lenore" could have resulted in mockery. Although Lenore DOES soften Squall's heart, so...
      • It could have been a Shout Out. While she isn't an example of the associated trope, she does have an angel motif, so it sort of fits.
    • Ultimecia is translated in some other countries as Artemisia.
  • The Final Fantasy VI character known as "Sabin" in the English version is called "Mash" in the Japanese version. Some fans have insisted that Mash is a mistranslation of "Matthew", but this is incorrect since transliterating "Matthew" to Japanese ends up as Mashū. The point is moot, since "Mash" is actually his nickname in Japan, his real name being Macias.
• One of the examples of Ted Woolsey's videogame translations is the comic recurring enemy Ultros from Final Fantasy VI, who was originally named Orthros. Square seems to go back and forth on whether to keep it or not. A reference to him as a mark in Final Fantasy XII and his appearance as a Bonus Boss in Final Fantasy Tactics A2 and the GBA and PSP versions of Final Fantasy I use "Orthros", but when the GBA version of Final Fantasy VI came out in America with a fresh script, they went back to "Ultros."
  • For extra confusion, in the German translation he's called Ultros.
  • Another name issue in FFVI is the Atma / Ultima weapon. While Ultima makes sense for all the future games and is therefore now the standard, Atma actually still works because it refers to the soul in Hindi. Therefore, a boss that has its lifeforce entirely in magic would make sense being a soul weapon. However, Atma Weapon was obviously only chosen for space considerations, and only appeared in the SNES version of FFVI where "Ultima Weapon" wouldn't fit. "Atma" doesn't even match the katakana for "Ultima". It's even lampooned in Final Fantasy X-2, where the bestiary entry for Ultima Weapon chides the player, "Whatever you do, don't call it Atma."
    • There is now a type of object in the Final Fantasy XI Abyssea add-ons called an Atma, possibly combining a Shout-Out with the Hindu meaning.
  • Note that Square officially romanizes "Kefka" as "Cefca" (Japanese materials to this day maintain the spelling), but the name is always changed to "Kefka" overseas. It's a very strange case because in Japanese, the hard C needed for this sound would be "ke" and the kana supports "Kefka". Unlike the Aerith/Aeris example, they've continued to leave his name alone in non-Japanese localizations.
    • This was lampshaded in the GBA enhanced port: at a certain point in the game, one of the guards in Figaro Castle will talk about how a certain faction of the Cult of Kefka argue about whether to spell Kefka's name with K's (as in Kefka) or C's (as in Cefca).
• The Final Fantasy games set in Ivalice started out with a lot of this, sometimes in the same game. As of the re-translations it's mostly cleared up, generally for the better.
  • The most famous example being the original release of Final Fantasy Tactics. The queen is most frequently referred to as Ruvelia, but occasionally the pronunciation is inverted to Luveria. The latter is chosen for the rerelease, but spelt Louveria. And don't get the fanbase started on Tietra/Teta, Orran/Olan, Zalbaag/Zalbag, Isilud/Izlude...
  • There has long been debate over Gilgamesh's "bad" sword equivalent of "Excalibur". The first game it appeared in was Final Fantasy V, and the most common translation for a long time was "Excailbur", taken from a fan translation done before the game was finally localized in the U.S. Square's first translation of this was in Final Fantasy VIII, in which they chose "Excalipoor", a name that made sense considering the horrible quality of the weapon. They later flipped back and forth on using "Excalipoor" and "Excalipur", though they appear to have finally settled on the former.
• In Final Fantasy XIII, the villain is named after the mythical creature Baldanders, but Square-Enix went with the Latinized name Barthandelus instead.
• In Final Fantasy IX, there's a recurring enemy called the Ragtime Mouse in the English release. It's almost certainly a mistransliteration of Ragtime Mouth (since the character in question is not a mouse, but does have a giant mouth: behold!)
• The French edition of Final Fantasy IX had Zidane's name changed to Djidane, though this was done because Zidane is the name of France's most popular football player.
  • His name was supposed to be Gitan (French for gypsy) anyway.
  • Zidane was really popular in Spain as well, hence in the Spanish translation the character is called Yitán.
  • It doesn't stop there for Final Fantasy IX - many Mythology Gags were ruined thanks to inconsistent translations. For example, there's a place in Final Fantasy IX called Mount Gulug, romanized as "Gurugu" in Japanese and obviously a reference to Gurgu Volcano from Final Fantasy I. The name of Eiko's Eidolon, Madeen, is supposed to be a reference to the Esper Maduin from Final Fantasy VI (both are romanized as "Madin" in Japanese), and its attack, Terra Homing, was supposed to be Terraforming ("Terafōmingu" in Japanese).
• In early Final Fantasy XII translations, Balthier's name originally appeared as 'Balflear', because that was actually his name in the Japanese original (romanised "Barufurea").
• In the first game of the The Legend of Zelda series, there was an armored knight enemy called a "Darknut" by the instruction book. It was intended to be Taatonakku, which translates as "Tart Knuck". Compare this with Zelda II's aiannakku which became "Iron Knuckle". There's also a boss enemy named rebonakku that rides a horse. This has simply been translated as "Rebonack" in the recent Zelda: Collectors Edition Player's Guide.
  • In the Official Nintendo Player's Guide, Ironknuckle was romanized as "Ironnack."
  • Also, the number of people who call Sheik "Shiek" is saddening. However, it is "Shiek" in Germany, because "Sheik" would be pronounced "shike", not "sheek" like it should be.
    • Oh, it gets worse: The official English release of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time misspells "Sheikah" as "Shiekah" in one Kakariko resident's dialogue.
  • And then we have Zoras vs. Zolas. This worked, though, because they look and behave like two separate species (Zora = tail-headed/nice; Zola = scaly and crested/AlwaysChaoticEvil [though the Zola King in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past isn't so bad]). In Oracle of Ages, both types are referred to as Zoras; according to an NPC in the Zora village, they're the same species, with "Ocean Zoras" being the friendly variety, and "River Zoras" being the enemy type.
  • The whole "Ganon vs. Gannon" mess from the original Zelda spawned its own meme.
  • Before The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass came out, some websites were translating Link's fairy companion Ciela's name as "Sierra", another L/R issue. "Ciela" is correct due to Theme Naming between the fairies; her name refers to air, and the others refer to earth and water.
  • The Zelda series makes a point of giving normal Anglo names strange Romanizations--for example, Renado from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess could've easily been "Leonard". What makes this even worse is that the Japanese website for the game used such "normal" Romanizations until the English release neared and everything was switched to the "weird" Romanizations.
  • Saria's name was spelled "Salia" in German.
  • The dragon bosses appearing in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and Ocarina of Time were actually intended to be one and the same, both being known as Barubajia in Japan. The former got translated as "Barba" in the initial English release, while the latter became "Volvagia".
• Dr. Light (ライト) from the Mega Man series had his name variously rendered as Light, Right, or Wright in the early games; it wasn't until 4 that it was standardized as Dr. Light in the English games. Similarly, Dr. Wily (ワイリー) was sometimes referred to as Dr. Wiley (or even Dr. Willy) in the early games.
  • In Japan, Dr. Light is officially spelled Dr. Right, with the logo of his lab being a capital "R" in the Famicom game Rockboard. When the Light's Lab logo appeared officially appeared in the English version of the series with Mega Man 9, it became a capital "L".
  • Mega Man 2 had Crash/Clash Man.
  • The Mega Man Battle Network games address the Light/Right mixup: the main protagonist's grandfather is called Tadashi Hikari, which pretty much translates to "Right Light" in English. Apparently Capcom thinks either version is fine for them at this point.
  • Averted with Mega Man Zero's Big Bad, Dr. Weil (Vile in Japan). Before he was unveiled in part 3, fans thought this was Capcom USA's worst translation botch ever, that they somehow got Dr. Wily's name wrong. Further more, his Japanese pronunciation is actually Bairu (バイル), which sounds like While/Bile/Vile so there was plenty of naming issues to Fan Wank over before MMZ3 was released and revealed...Dr. Weil as a completely separate person. "Weil" is presumably with a Germanic V-sounding W, thus keeping the pronunciation more or less identical.
  • In a Mega Man X manga adaption there's a mermaid character named Marty, however people find this either stupid or a translation error as the character it question is female, causing quite a few variations to the name: Marti, Martei, Mary, Marit, and Merit.
  • In the Game Mod Rockman 6: Unique Harassment, Napalm Cracker is spelled as Naparm Cracker.
• The protagonist of the original Fire Emblem appears to have been named for Mars (The god of war), however the Super Smash Bros..' series localized his name as Marth. The Japanese aren't any help in this -- the debug menu for Melee has "Mars" in English, but the artbooks put out for Monshou no Nazo, as well as the official trading card game clearly have "Marth" written in English, yet the same card game also writes "Minerva" as Minerba", "Jeorge" as "Jorjue" and "Scorpio" as "Scopio".
  • Nintendo also likes to completely change names for no apparent reason. This usually leads to mass confusion when new titles come out because there's always been enough delay for fans to have translated the names themselves. To be fair, Nintendo does have reasons for it occasionally, usually to eliminate names that sound strange in English (like Beeze) or to try and get them all to sound consistent in one universe. However, changing "Soanevalke" to "Stefan" came back to bite them when his Japanese name was actually a hint to the character's origins in Radiant Dawn.
    • Nintendo also screwed up with the name of the Dragon King. It's spelled "Deghinsea" in Path Of Radiance, then spelled "Dheginsea" in Radiant Dawn (however, this was fixed in the PAL version, which uses Path of Radiance's spelling).
  • Now that Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon is out in the U.S. and Europe, it's even more obvious that one hand was not talking to the other. Since the original "Marth" games were not officially translated until late 2008/early 2009, fans had accepted certain spellings years ago out of necessity, so you can also add "changes" that may not have deliberately been changes at all. While you can find a much more extensive list of names elsewhere, certain changes deserve special mention here.
    • First off, the legendary paladin of suck, Crutch Character Jeigan is now "Jagen" worldwide, but his Japanese name will forever be used for the archetype he spawned in the JRPG community.
    • Marth's Pegasus Knight friend/lover is "Sheeda" in Japan, "Shiida" in Europe, and "Caeda" in North America (though likely pronounced the same - the name is Gaelic).
    • Navarre has the most variations thanks to fans, companies, and Nintendo refusing to pick one name and stay with it. So officially, in English, he's both "Navarre" (US) and "Nabarl (PAL)". Other official spellings in the past were ADV's translation of "Navahl" for the anime, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl translation of "Nabaaru" (a straight transliteration of the name's katakana), as well as some alternative fan names used for fan translations. Meaningful names don't help here either, Nabal is a character in the bible, Navarre is a region in Spain.
    • The character romanized with "Cheini" and fan dubbed as "Chainy" became "Xane" in both English versions.
    • Marth's homeland is "Akaneia" and Super Smash Bros Melee translated it as that (a debug menu also showed "Akaneia" as a stage). The American release uses "Archanea".
    • Likewise, the enemy country of Dolua became "Dolhr" in the US and "Doluna" in Europe.
  • The fourth game, Seisen no Keifu (or Genealogy of Holy War), was never released outside Japan, which results in the usual fan translation weirdness. Like Yurius and Yuria versus Julius and Julia, and the Gayborg spear (should be Gae Bolg).
    • Gayborg is actually the official Japanese-English spelling; it was replaced with Gae Bolg in the fan translation years ago anyway. A more topical example would be the legendary thunder magic Tor Hammer, which numerous people consider to be a mistranslation of Thor Hammer when it is actually theme naming along with the other legendary magic.
  • As mentioned, even official translations can be a bit dodgy. The seventh game, Rekka no Ken ("Sword of Flame"), or just plain Fire Emblem outside Japan, has a serious Matter of France theme to its names (Roland, Durandal, and so on) but for some reason Turpin and Almace became Durban and Armads. Then again, the original Turpin was an archbishop who followed his emperor to war and Durban is a bloodthirsty berserker.
  • Even the official Japanese subtitle of the original Famicom game has been subject to variation due to the different readings for the kanji for "sword". Some official sources use Ankoku Ryuu to Hikari no Ken, while other sources uses Ankoku Ryuu to Hikari no Tsurugi.
    • And then you have the conflicting translations of those titles. "Sword of Seals", "Sealed Sword", or "Binding Blade"? "Sword of Flames" or "Blazing Blade"? "Dark Dragons and the Sword of Light" or "Shadow Dragons and the Bright Blade"? "Sword of Flames/Blazing Blade" was dropped from the title entirely for the American release, and the DS remake of the first game was simply called "Shadow Dragon". Jeebus.
• The Phantasy Star series has several examples, the most Egregious of which involve the complete name change of a character present in the first two games, Noah in the first game, Lutz in the second. While the name used in the second game is the correct one, it was so long before the change was identified that many fans of the series are convinced the character is actually two separate people who look alike. A large body of fanon was created to support the idea. Note also: Dark Force/Darkfalz/Dark Phallus.
  • In PSO, there is a weapon named Rika's Claw. PSU has a weapon named Falclaw. Both weapons look identical...because they reference the same character, a Newman named Rika in English versions of Phantasy Star IV, and Fal in Japanese versions. Similar, but less severe, violations include the weapon named Sato in PSO which is named Shato in PSU, and the enemy named Gigobooma in PSO and Jigo Booma in PSU.
    • In Phantasy Star Zero the spelling has been changed once more, this time to "Chato". Maybe it's an inside joke on the part of the localization team.
  • Related, Phantasy Star Online quests would have a trader character as "Garon" or "Gallon", while both are literally "Garon" in Japanese. As such, many would not relate the person dealt with in "Gallon's Shop" to the man who appears in the offline / single player quests. So, as above, some players remain convinced that there are two large men dressed in purple who want more money and hate you when you don't do perfect work.
• Amazingly the American Command & Conquer series suffers from this. Character names are often not consistently spelled in the manuals, credits and ingame tooltips. Shephard/Sheppard, Slavik/Slavic and even the incorrect spelling of CABAL as KABAL in the credits of Tiberian Sun, even though it's an acronym.
• Castlevania can beat you over the head with this one if you're not careful. For simplicity's sake, lets just focus on the North American/European games:
  • The Belnades clan have their name spelled in several ways thorough the Castlevania series. Belnades, the most common spelling in the English games, was originally used only in the manual for Castlevania III; the game itself actually spelled it as Velnumdes, and for some reason it was castilianised to Fernandez in Castlevania 64. The literal romanization is Verunandesu (ヴェルナンデス), since the Japanese tend to use the "V" sound only when they mean it to spell that way too. Best to just split the difference and say Velnandes, thus making noone happy.
  • A new timeline has identified Sypha as "Cipher", and Harmony of Dissonance translated Sypha's Charm as "Cipher's Charm". Only to fix her name back to 'Sypha' in Castlevania Judgment.
    • • For Sypha, her name is a Punny Name, for "cipher", as in a secret, which Sypha's gender was at first
    • The same timeline also gave Maria Renard's surname as "Larnett", though the recent PSP remake/port of the games she appeared in went back to Renard, casting doubt on the accuracy of the rest of the timeline's (numerous) spelling changes.
    • If the Japanese site for Castlevania Judgment is any indication, it's spelled Renard. And the other character is called Sypha... Belnades. (Aside from Ralph and Belmondo, that appears to be the only difference.)
    • Meh, 3 minutes ago, the Japanese sites were saying her name was Learned. Apparently it's from a Japanese university named after a foreign biologist or something.
  • Others that are translation issues but haven't caused inconsistencies (yet): Maria Renard/Learned/Larnett, Soleiyu/Soleil Belmont, Christopher/Christophe Belmont, Eric Lecard/Ricardo, Grant DaNasty/Dinesti/Dynasty, and of course Belmont/Belmondo/Beaumont.
    • Eric's surname and Solieyu I can understand but since when was Christopher called Christophe?
    • Dynasty and Beaumont were single-instance print media typos. And Grant's last name would be "Danesti" were that not a case of Did Not Do the Research, if he is meant to be a descendant of Dan II.
  • Rover/Lauber Mansion from Simon's Quest, and Garuga/Gallagher (Bloodlines?).
  • In the games with explicitly named enemies, a certain type of agile, dual-dagger-wielding enemy was given the name "Skeleton Blaze", starting with Symphony of the Night. Although it is fairly obvious to all involved (except the translators) that this should be "Skeleton Blades", the localization teams have kept this the same throughout the entire series, presumably for continuity.
  • In Kid Dracula, the main villain is called Garamoth. In Symphony of the Night and subsequent games, he is known as Galamoth.
• Angol Moa/Angolmois from Wild ARMs.
  • There are debates over whether "Zeikfried" in the first game is supposed to be "Siegfried." The fact that his appearance in the third game spells it Siegfried appears to be nullified by Alter Code F's Blind Idiot Translation that reverts it back to Zeikfried.
  • Final Fantasy VI had the same problem. Then Ultros becomes a receptionist at the cavalcade of misspellings that is the Colosseum/Coliseum and the circle is complete.
• Happens each time UDE decides to transliterate the Konami names for Yu-Gi-Oh! cards instead of renaming them, and sometimes even when fans try to translate OCG-only cards themselves. Some memorable ones include Gors/Gorz/Gooz/Goes and Goggle Golem/Google Golem/Giant Ogre Golem.
• Prier/Priere from the Disgaea and La Pucelle games. Her name is only spelled with the last "e" in the former, where she appears as a Bonus Boss. Not helping the situation at all is that both versions work within the Theme Naming of the series {Prier = "To Pray", Priere = "Prayer").
  • Also in Disgaea, the overlord Laharl's name is a subject of debate. Though Laharl is the official spelling in all of the games, "Lahar" would make more sense; it is a term related to volcanoes and would be in keeping with the other volcano-related names, like Etna and Vulcanus.
• Not a character name, but Fatal Fury (and The King of Fighters after it) has Geese Howard's first Desperation Move. Because of how he yells the name, translators have spent ages trying to work out if it's "Raging Storm" or "Raising Storm". Fatal Fury Battle Archives says "Raging"; Capcom vs. SNK says "Raising". Most move lists go with "Raising Storm". Fans, on the other hand, universally go with "Raging Storm". Or a long string of profanities, but that's almost certainly not the official name.
  • The first I heard was "Razing Storm", which would actually make the most sense, since it doesn't rise above the ground and (until very late in the series) isn't at all raging. (FYI, "raze" means to demolish a structure.)
  • For that matter, a LOT of attacks used by Fatal Fury characters have this problem. In large part because for most of them no one's even sure what they're saying, let alone how to spell it.
    • Terry Bogard is especially bad about this.
    • But Duck King is the undisputed champ. "Wahn gooh fuh buh-huh looOOOOOOhh!"
• This can become a hot issue in Pokémon fandom in the run-up to a new generation as the romanisations used by the most popular fansite are technically correct but not always the best. (A big one was Rukario for Lucario, which is a direct transliteration of how Lucario is written in katakana.)
  • There was a snag when Manectric's Japanese name, ライボルト, was fan romanized as Raibolt. However, the official romanization is Livolt.
  • Then there's Togechick (トゲチック), which is incorrectly translated as Togetic overseas. People were "tic'd" off by this since it was announced.
  • As of the reveal of the starter Pokemon for the upcoming Black and White versions, there's been debate on whether the grass starter's name (ツタージャ) should be written as Tsutaja, Tsutaaja, or Tsutarja. The fact that "tsutarja" is a registered domain name belonging to Nintendo gives that Romanization more weight.
  • One of the player character's rivals in Pokémon Black and White is ベル; this has been variously written as Beru, Belle, Bell, and Bel. Her Dub Name Change to Bianca makes this mostly a non-issue, however.
    • The last is more likely because "Bel" is the Russian word for "white"; her male counterpart is named "Cheren", the Bulgarian word for "black".
  • You'd think that while romanising the Japanese names can be a difficult task, there wouldn't be any issue with the English names, right? Wrong. The Pokédex entry for Mawile in Ruby version spells its name as "Mawhile".
  • Don't forget Geechisu/Geechis/Geetis/Geecis/Geotis/G'Cis/Ghetsis/Dennis/Whatever-the-heck-his-name-tis!
    • Or the prehistoric bug robot that his criminal team revived from a fossil: is it Genesect or Genosect? Either works as a pun on the DNA theme (Gene or Genome), with the second spelling giving rise to rumors that it was for "Genocide", and the declaration that "Genosect killed off the dinosaurs". Or for that matter, why not call him "Dennis" based on a mishearing of G-whatever-is' theme?
• Fanon of Super Robot Wars is big on this, with Ibis Douglas often being spelled "Ivis" even though, the first time you see her in-game, it's outright written in English as Ibis. Examples of names that are supposed to be real foreign-language words getting fan-romanized into Engrish abound, including "Geshpenst," (Gespenst, German for "ghost"), "Sladegelmir" (Thrudgelmir, a Norse giant), and one from the official translation, "Alfimi" ("Alchemie," German for "alchemy").
  • The kicker is another character's possible names, Levi Tolar, Rebi Torah, and Rabbi Torah, as all of them fit the character in terms of language and meaningfulness... and all three are spelled the same in Japanese.
  • Zengar Zombolt gets a little pass, since it was first spelled in katakana that way, as the Japanese pronunciation of the actual spelling, Sanger Zonvolt. Silly German.
    • Unfortunately the Japanese don't help and this gets even more confusing with Zengar'sSanger's mech, as the joke is that he shortens "Dynamic General Guardian" in Japanese to "Dai-Zen-Gar"... Big Zengar. However, in English the joke doesn't work at all (you can't squeeze "Sanger" out of "Gen-Guard" unless you read "Sanger" with a German accent and "Gen-Guard" with a Japanese one - and even then it's a stretch) and fell flat in Atlus' translation of OGs.
    • The Fan Translation of Alpha Gaiden choose "Sombold", because that was the closest thing that was an actual German name.
  • Oh, and there's Sleigh/Surei/Srey/Slaye Presty/Presti.
  • And let's not forget poor Latouni/Latooni/Ratouni Subota/Zuvota. To make matters worse, she doesn't even have an official Romanization (before the English version was released, at least), since her name in Japanese material, when it's not in katakana, is always rendered in Cyrillic as "латунь суббота". That generates another issue, since the Cyrillic provided is missing the "i" syllable in her given name (it becomes Latoun or any other variation thereof).
  • Original Generation Gaiden makes fun of Banpresto's own mistake by having the boss of R, Duminuss finds out that her name is actually Dynamis (greek for power), Banpresto has simply mispelled it while making R.
  • There's also Tootie/Tytti/Tutti Noorbuck/Norback/Nolbach... Since she's supposed to be Finnish, the most likely correct version would be Tytti Norrback (with two R's).
    • Speaking of that, even her mecha's name is an example of Spell My Name with an "S". Some call it Gaddeath, but some also call it Goddess even though it's not one, since it adds up a Shout-Out to a certain goddess Tytti was almost similar with.
  • The newest and probably most ridiculous one would be the new Loli protagonist of Super Robot Wars Z. Most formal people call her 'Mel Peter', but some just go on ahead and call her Male Beater...
  • And after all the above, the confusion over Psybuster and Cybuster seems downright tame...
    • People render it as Cyberstar, despite that not matching the kana unless you kind of squint and are really drunk.
      • And then there's the official Japanese translation of Cybaster.
  • Speaking of Z, how about "The Edel," who takes the time in-game to explain that he calls himself The Edel to make it clear that he's more important and more powerful than any of his Alternate Universe incarnations. This doesn't stop some people from spelling it "Ji Edel."
• As an example of this trope occurring even when transliteration is not involved, the infamously bad OHRRPGCE game Magnus can't decide on whether its Squishy Wizard is named "Quio" or "Ouio."
• EarthBound features a villain named Pokey in the U.S. version, who threatens to come back for revenge in the ending. He makes good on his promise in Mother 3, and this incarnation makes a cameo as a boss in Super Smash Bros.. Brawl. Problem? His name was originally meant to be Porky, referring to his bloated belly and pig-like nose, and the pig theme continues with his army in Mother 3. Brawl uses the name Porky, obscuring the connection to the EarthBound villain.
  • It's a bit hard to grasp the true form of the name of the series's final boss. It has been transliterated as "Gyiyg" or "Geeg", but the localizers for Earthbound Zero used "Giegue". Early promotional material for Earthbound actually referred to him as "Geek" before it was modified/finalized into "Giygas".
  • Nintendo can't even seem to make up its mind about the name of the Mother 3 village - in the US Super Smash Bros Brawl, one of Lucas's trophies refers to it as "Tazumily". The PAL version changes it to the more common spelling of "Tazmily".
  • Then there's the party member Lloyd/Loid/Roid from the first game in the series. An older official encyclopedia writes it as "Roid", while "Loid" relates to a potential Japanese pun on his Nerd Glasses, and "Lloyd" seems the most natural for an American character. Brawl officially writes his name as "Lloyd". A less-debated example is Ana/Anna from the same game. It turns out to be "Ana" according to Brawl, though.
• Protagonist Roid/Lloyd Clive in the first Front Mission game. Roid being the original Japanese spelling, Lloyd being the fan-translated version. Proponents of either version were surprised when his name was officially translated as Royd.
• Clark Still, Ralf Jones' partner from the Ikari Warriors and The King of Fighters games, has had his surname misromanized by fans as "Steel", even though the Japanese spelling of his surname doesn't have a long vowel mark, which would be the case if his surname was truly "Steel". There's a popular misconception that his surname was originally "Steel" as a Shout-Out to Superman, but was changed to "Still" to avoid any potential copyright infringement. However, the "Still" surname has been used for the character since the Japanese version of the first Ikari game (see here). All of this didn't prevent Terminal Realities from misspelling his surname as "Steel" in The Orochi Saga Collection.
• Kevin Rian from Garou: Mark of the Wolves, is supposedly a distant relative of Blue Mary of Fatal Fury and KOF fame, even though Mary's surname is romanized differently in the KOF series (Ryan).
• Gantz/Guntz from Klonoa 2: Dream Champ Tournament and Klonoa: Beach Volleyball respectively. His name was romanized differently in each game.
  • The character who is known as "Joka" in the original game is changed to "Joker" in the Wii remake.
• The Atelier series gets a whole helping of a ton of the above issues, featuring both a character with the katakana of "Norudisu" (leading our friends at Tokyopop to spell it as both "Nordith" and "Nordis" during the print run of the Atelier Marie & Elie spinoff manga) and the fact that the setting for the first three games (if not many of the others) is a variation on Renaissance Germany, with many words being pronounced in a kind of pseudo-Gratuitous German fashion. Gust Inc., makers of the games, like to call the principality "Salburg" (and even run a website with that name); several fan translators and Tokyopop go with "Zarlburg" due to the katakana used to represent the German pronunciation of "s". Latter games, especially those still unreleased in the West, have a host of other pronunciation issues.
• In the arcade version of Rival Schools', Shoma has his name romanized as "Syoma", which is from a non-Hepburn romanization system used by the Japanese. It was changed to "Shoma" in the PlayStation version.
  • The sequel, Project Justice, cleverly uses this trope to diferentiate between similar characters. In the story, the hero Batsu is plauged by a look-a-like who is actually by Big Bad Kurow going around ruining his good reputation. The fake Batsu can be fought against and eventually can be a playable character, so to differentiate him from the real Batsu, Capcom took advantage of the ambigutity in B and V sounds in Japanese and named the fake hero "Vatsu".
• While not a mistranslation per se, Blizzard has recently decided that all names should be translated to the respective language in World of Warcraft, while the initial release, Warcraft 3 and all novels simply used the English names. Thankfully, it's possible to download a language pack to play it in English altogether. If only the same could be said about the novels...
• The male lead of Star Ocean the Second Story has the official name of "Claude" in the US, but his name is officially romanized as "Crawd" in Japanese. No English speakers actually use the name "Crawd", though, because it doesn't sound anything like an actual name -- it's generally accepted that tri-Ace really did mean for him to be named Claude, and just messed up the romanization.
  • To make things more confusing, the game uses voice acting during battles. Sometimes his name is pronounced "Crawd," and sometimes "Claude."
    • And for whatever reason, they went and changed every single name in the PSP remake of the first game so that none of them match up with the sequel anymore. Even though the original game has perfectly legible English names for every single major character in its end credits.
• Silhouette Mirage is heavy on the Judeo-Christian Theme Naming of its characters, but the names of the protagonist's seven weapons got lost in translation. They are named after the Seven Deadly Sins using the Japanese equivalent of the English words. The names were taken literally from the transliterations, leading to the following: Surosa (Sloth), Priday (Pride), Angara (Anger), Rasti (Lust), Cavitas (Covetry or Greed), Grattoni (Gluttony), and Envia (Envy).
• Kirby's Dream Land had a blimp-like boss named Kaboola, which was absent in the Kirby Super Star sub-game Spring Breeze, which was mostly a remake of Kirby's Dream Land (some other features were also absent). The remake of Kirby Super Star for the Nintendo DS, Kirby Super Star Ultra, added the sub-game Revenge of the King, which is basically a harder version of Spring Breeze. In it the formerly missing boss returned with an altered appearance, as well as an altered name: Kabula. However, once Kirby's Dream Land was released on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console, the name was back to being Kaboola according to the digital manual that comes with the game.
  • The Combo Cannon (which recently had appeared in Super Smash Bros. Brawl) was renamed Main Cannon #2 in Super Star Ultra. Not too many fans were happy about that.
    • Heck, many names in the remake were incorrectly translated or even renamed, including Cavios to Cavius, Mecheye to Mekkai, Kaboola to Kabula, Iron Mom to Iron Mam, and so on.
  • Before the Kaboola/Kabula incident was the case of Mr. Frosty, who was inexplicably named "Mr. Flosty" in Kirby and the Amazing Mirror.
  • Not everyone seems to agree on whether it's Metaknight, Meta-Knight or Meta Knight, either. It's usually written as Meta Knight in the games, though Super Smash Bros. Brawl writes it as Meta-Knight on his trophy.
  • The Galacta Knight is called Galactic Knight (Gyarakutikku Naito) in Japanese. Also, Marx was called Mark (Maruku).
• Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love For Sail includes a character named Xqwzts. The writer of the game intended for it to be pronounced "X-squats," but the actor that plays Larry couldn't get it right. That gave the writer the idea to have every character intentionally mispronounce the name any crazy way they could think of. In fact, throughout the whole game, only one character (not Larry) says it "correctly".
• A recurring villain in the Bomberman series is Bagular/Bauglar/Buggler. While all are legitimate translations of the name "Bagura," Hudson Soft seems to have a hard time picking which one to go with. The confusion only gets worse when 2 games were released at the same time (Bomberman Hero and Bomberman World), each one referring to the character by a different name...or two (Hero had both of the first two spellings).
  • Bomberman Fantasy Race has the name as Bugglar in the credits, even in the Japanese version. The translators chose to translate it as Burglar, however for whatever reason.
• Mathematicians call a Tetris piece a tetromino, by parallel with "domino". The Tetris Company once called it a "tetramino" before settling on "tetrimino".
• Bubble Symphony aka Bubble Bobble II: Its flyer stated the name for the orange female bubble dragon as "Cururun" ^{[dead link]}. The game itself says it's "Kululun". Chalk one up to C/K and R/L confusion.
  • There's a reason to avoid trusting the flyer anyway.
• In Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga and Super Smash Bros.. Brawl, you might notice that the starfish character appearing in both goes by the name of "Stafy". Well, his game series is finally being brought overseas as... The Legendary Starfy (ie: Starfy). His cameo in Mario & Luigi called it The Legend of Stafy. Make of that what you will.
• Nobody can seem to decide whether the Amazon princess of Seiken Densetsu 3 is supposed to be called "Lise", "Riese", or "Riesz".
• Gray Fox from the Metal Gear series has had his real name translated as "Frank Jaeger" or "Yeager", depending on the game. Incidentally, Yeager is an Americanized form of the German surname Jaeger. His codename also varies between "Gray Fox" and "Grey Fox".
  • But that's just a matter of American spelling versus British spelling.
  • The MSX2 versions of Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake had a few romanizations for some of the characters' names that are different from the ones used in the later Metal Gear Solid games. Roy Campbell was originally called "Roy Kyanbel", Holly White was "Horry White", George Kasler in the PlayStation 2 version is known as George Kesler. Gustava Heffner and Johan Jacobsen were originally called Natasha Marcova and Yozef Norden respectively, which were legitimate name changes to the characters and not different romanizations of the same name. Natasha was likely changed due to the introduction of a later character called Nastasha Romanenko, but Yozef's was unexplained
  • The names of the bosses in the first two Metal Gear games for the MSX2 were mostly mangled pop-culture references: there's "Arnold" the cyborg (as in Schwarzenegger), "Coward Duck" (Howard the Duck), "Black Color" (from Blackcollar, an obscure Timothy Zahn novel about space ninjas), "Ultra Box" (Ultravox) and the "Predator". Not surprisingly, almost all of them (with the exception of Running Man) were changed in the remade versions.
• That guy with the pointy hat in Mortal Kombat: is he Raiden or Rayden? Justified in that "Raiden" is a legitimate Japanese name, but the developers were forced to alter the spelling to avoid confusion with the other Raiden. Or the Shoot'Em Up series Raiden.
• An example born out of the game's TV adaptation slightly changing the name of the character in question: Tlaloc/Traloc.
• In an interesting aversion to the sort of trouble Romanizing "Kururu" as mentioned previously, Working Designs, when translating Arc the Lad Collection for the PlayStation, just left Kukuru's name the hell alone: she's "Kukuru" in the US, as well.
• Lord Raptor's name from Darkstalkers is spelled "Lord Rapter" in the third game, Vampire Savior. Despite being a Japanese game, this is a purely western example; Lord Raptor's name in the Japanese version is named Zabel Zarock.
• In SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos, Genjuro Kibagami gets his name spelled as "Genjyuro Kibagami", while "Juli" becomes "Juri".
• In Samurai Shodown III, Rimururu's name is spelled "Rimnerel" on the instruction card.
• The King of Fighters 2001 mistakenly refers to "Chang" as "Chan".
• A few Street Fighter and Final Fight examples.
  • Rolento from the original Final Fight had his name spelled "Rolent" in the SNES sequel, Final Fight 2. "Rolent" spelling doesn't show up in any other game, except in his ending in Street Fighter Alpha 2.
  • "Shadaloo" , the name of M. Bison's organization in the Street Fighter series, is alternatively spelled "Shadoloo" or even "Shadowlaw".
  • Guy's real name is actually Gai according to several sources . "Guy" is actually an approximation of how his name is supposed to be pronounced (likely done to avoid the Accidental Innuendo). Unfortunately, there are fans who end up mispronouncing Guy's name as "Gwee".
  • Chun-Li's and Fei-Long's names are sometimes spelled as one words ("Chunli" or "Feilong") or without the hyphen.
  • On the credits of the Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, Cammy's and Dee-Jay's names are spelled "Cammie" and "DJ".
• The NES version of Double Dragon has an enemy character whose name is spelled "Rowper" in the game's versus mode and "Lopar" in the manual. His name is actually intended to be a nod to Roper from Enter the Dragon, since one of the other Mooks in the game is named Williams. To make matters even more confusing, the names "Roper" and "Lopar" are used for two different enemy characters in Battletoads & Double Dragon, neither of them actually resembles the actual Rowper/Lopar character from the original game (one of them is really just a renamed Machine Gun Willy).
  • The name of Billy's girlfriend also seems to vary between "Marian" and "Marion" depending on the game. The manual for the Sega Master System version actually calls her "Mary-Ann"
• Langrisser II and Der Langrisser never had official translations, so some names are completely inconsistent, not just between translations, but within translations themselves. Is it Kalxath, Kalzas or Karzas? Liana or Riana? Lana or Larna? Boser, Bozel, or Bosel?
• In Thunder Force III, the upgraded version of the Twin Shot has been spelled out as both "Sever" and "Saber." The latter spelling is a bit funny because the upgraded Back Shot is called "Lancer".
• In Valis II for the Turbografx CD, Valis is sometimes pronounced "Varis", thanks to Blind Idiot Translation. The villain of Valis IV, Garugia/Galgear, had his name officially translated in Super Valis IV as "Gallagher".
• In the Sega Master System version of the first Ghostbusters game, Gozer is transliterated "Gorza".
• While not a mistransliteration, Lisa from Backyard Sports has a last name that has been said to be either Crocket or Crockett. Neither of which are meaningful. Even the developers aren't sure.
• Tekken: Dr. Bosconovitch's name is sometimes spelled "Vasconovich".
• The Zoids games suffer from all the misspellings the anime series do, and dozens more besides. Including the occasional screwup of an anime character's official English name...
• Averted (mostly) by the characters in Touhou. Everyone who appears in the games have their names in Japanese, then a handy English Romanization next to it. This has helped quite a lot over time with names, even the ones that are actually Japanese. For example, the second kanji in Tenshi's name is more commonly read as "ko;" the Romanization cleared up quite a lot of confusion (although "Tenko" is still a popular Fan Nickname for her).
  • There are exceptions occasionally though, when ZUN starts using foreign names. Is "Parsee" was pronounced "par-sii," or "par-seh-eh" (the former is the correct based on the katakana).
  • Special notice must be given to foreigner Maribel/Mariber/Maeriberii Hearn/Haarn/Haan (mix and match as you will). As she only appears in the music CDs, not the games, there is no official Romanization of her name. This is even lampshaded by her (most definitely Japanese) friend Renko Usami, who can't even pronounce her full name, and always calls her "Mary." Even that can be Romanized as "Merri," "Merii," or "Merry" instead. The poor girl just can't get a break.
  • The naming crisis is averted for characters like Inubashiri Momizi/Momiji, Kotiya/Kochiya Sanae, and Kazami Yuka/Yuuka because the Fandom has accepted they're the same character.
    • These particular differences in romanization are because ZUN doesn't want to pin down just which one (there are multiple romanization schemes) he wants to use.
  • An interesting variation of this problem is Inaba Tewi, who uses an archaic character "wi" (ゐ) which was legislated out of the language by the Japanese government in 1954 (she's more than 1300 years old). Even in its original, the name would roughly be a homonym of "Tei" (てい). There has been at least one unofficial translation of Imperishable Night that used "Tei" but officially only Phantasmagoria of a Flower View uses "Tei."
    • Similarly, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody has final boss Tenshi Hinanai, whose surname can also be written as Hinanawi. In this case, fandom usually settles on the former spelling.
  • Hong Meiling knows what it's like to not have anyone know her name.
  • Even though Flandre appears to be the most common spelling of this vampire's name, it has been spelled Frandle, Frandoll, Frandale, Frandre, etc.
• When Pac-Man was first released in Japan, it was known as "Puckman" (pronounced Pakkuman). However, the name had to be changed for its U.S. release because the "P" could be vandalized making the name offensive to people. Namco found another romanization of the same pronunciation, and "Pac-Man" has since become the official English spelling of the name in Japan.
• Jak and Daxter's Erol had his name's spelling changed to Errol in Jak 3, then back to Erol in Daxter. Some fans have joked that the extra "R" stands for "robot", given his "enhancements" in the third game.
  • I am Errol?
• The Dragon Quest series had Slime-like enemies called Babbles and Metal Babbles, which look more bubbling than babbling. Newer translations have them as Bubble Slimes and Liquid Metal Slimes.
• In Tsukihime, レン has had issues with her name. Until the release of Melty Blood, she had no official romanization. But Melty Blood gives Len as her official romanization. There was a dispute about this, fans insisting that her actual name is spelled Ren, citing that Type-Moon sometimes "messes up". But considering that it's been Len throughout the series...
• Lots of these in the Ys games: Rea/Lea/Lair, Luta/Luther, Dark Fact/Dulk Fukt, Duless/Dalles, Varestain/Valestine/Ballacetine, etc. Doesn't help that many of the games weren't officially translated. And others had their names completely changed. Not to mention that the first U.S. release on the Sega Master System spelled the title Y's.
• Back when Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep was announced, fans translated the name of the new heartless style monsters as Unbirths. This spelling spread widely and no one thought anything of it until Word of God corrected fans that it was Unversed, meaning one "who is not enlightned" rather then the "oppostie of human life". Many fans still insisted it was supposed to be "Unbirth" and that the English version was censoring it.
  • Which is a good thing, considering "unbirthing" is apparently a vore fetish.
    • Its actually a translation issue as the Japanese language didn't have an equivalent romanji for the letter "v" and used "b" instead
  • One of the Ansem Reports in Kingdom Hearts II mentions the names of his apprentices. In the North American version, Dilan, Aeleus and Braig are written Dilin, Eleus and Bleig. This was corrected in the PAL version.
• Journey to Silius is supposed to be "Sirius".
• The cover of the Japanese version of Yoshi's Island actually spells the game's title as "Yossy Island".
• The intro to Sonic the Fighters infamously misspelled Dr. Robotnik's name "DR. ROBOTONIC."
  • This also applies to Sonic Colo(u)rs, the name slightly changes depending on how the word colours is spelled in the region the game is being sold in. A wise decision on SEGA's part.
• Everyone knows the Vic Viper is the main ship in the Gradius series (barring the odd name changes made by Konami's localization staff, like the "Warp Rattler" or the "M.A.X."), but what about the Player 2 ship that appears in Salamander spinoffs. Is it the "Lord British" (a possible intentional Shout-Out to Richard Garriott of the Ultima franchise), the "Road British" or the "Load British"?
  • When it doubt, believe in the heart of the cards. And if you don't trust children's card games, Solar Assault also makes "Lord British" its name.
  • Gradius's title is itself a Japanese misspelling of "gladius". Some material refers to the Spider Tank enemy as the "Club(Crab) Spider".
• Knights in The Nightmare has this in spades. No one can seem to agree whether the princess' name is Pisce, Pische, or Piche. The other princess is Arlier, Arlie, or Alier. The archer general is Aculienne, Aqualine, Acqueline, or Aquina. Zolgonark has been spelled with a C at the end. How many Ls are in Yelma, or is it an R? Is it Vienna, Vienya, or Vinya? And that's not even the complete list.
  • Likewise, Blaze Union. The only new character whose name is certain is Garlot.
  • Put simply, Sting Entertainment has a bad habit of choosing As Long as It Sounds Foreign names and then not telling America how they're supposed to be spelled.
  • Averted, thankfully, by Gloria Union, in which whenever a character leads a Union, their name shows up on the attack confirmation screen. Unfortunately, Sting decided not to spell "Minnesota" correctly, as they did it with just one N. And seeing as the character with that name is an Indiana Jones Expy...
• Star Fox Command retconned Panther Caroso to Panther Caruso for unknown reasons. And since there hasn't been a new Star Fox game after it, most fans will probably still use Caroso.
• In addition to the usual Blind Idiot Translation, Resident Evil 2 had many gross misspellings, including "dust shoot" and "mugnum parts".
• In the manual for Syphon Filter, Girdeux is misspelled "Girdeaux".
• In Remember 11, the first main character has her name spelled "Cocoro" in the opening credits, but the translation in the game itself uses "Kokoro", which renders it using standard romanization spelling
• Metal Slug 3's Stage 4 boss is named ソル・デ・ロカ in official artwork. That name is often romanized as "Sol Dae Rokker", even though it's clearly "Sol de roca" (Spanish for "sun of rock"; that thing is made of rock and looks like a sun)
• In SaGa2 / Final Fantasy Legend II, it is usually taken for granted that the character named Lynn in the west was called Lin in the original Japanese version. However, the romanization of the game on the 2009 remake's Japanese website lists her name as Rin.
• Armored Core has had it bad, especially after changing hands from Agetec to Sega to Ubisoft. Last Raven brings us Zinaida (a common Cyrillic name, although the kana spelling is nonstandard), which has been argued to be Schneider (totally missed it), and from Nexus onwards, we also have Genobee which has been suggested to be originally Shinobi (implausible) or Zinovi (another common Cyrillic name, very likely). Those are examples of pragmatic translations; Sega and Ubisoft were more...lax. Then again, who can really blame them for being divided between Abu Marche and Abe Marsh ?
  • Then again, Agetec did mess up big time in the first game and rendered the pilot of Valkyrie, Rossweisse/Roßweiße as "Losvaize". It may have been excused on the grounds that Rossweisse is an allusion to one of the Valkyries in Die Walkuere and Agetec didn't know that, but her name is displayed on her own emblem! *headdesk*
• In Okami, there is a character named Ishaku. In Okamiden, he is inexplicably now named Isshaku.
• The NES version of Hydlide only describes the plot in the manual, unlike the original PC-88 version. The English manual renamed the Big Bad Boralis, though his name is still displayed as Varalys in the game's status window.
• The Legacy of the Wizard manual names the mother, son, grandmother and grandfather "Meyna", "Roas", "Jiela" and "Douel" respectively (though the mother is "Mayna Worzen" in the credits), whereas the intro screen for the MSX2 version (Dragon Slayer IV: Drasle Family) names them Maia, Royas, Geera and Dawel. The English version changed the name of the Final Boss to Keela, but in Japan its name was either Dilgyos or Dilguios.
• Fate/stay night does not really have official spellings for names like Ilyasviel Von Einzbern, leading to spelling her name both Ilya and Illya. FSN used Ilya while the translators for Fate/hollow ataraxia are using Illya. There is, however, an official Romanization for Saber's real name -- Altria, as opposed to the fan translation's Arturia.
• Persona 4: The Golden adds a new female character named マリー. Fights have already erupted over whether she'll be known as Marii, Mari, Mary, or Marie in the English edition.
• In the original Japanese MSX2 version of Aleste, the name of the supercomputer gone wrong was romanized as "DIA 51". The supercomputer was written out of the translated Sega Master System version, Power Strike, but the out-of-game material for M.U.S.H.A. refers to it as "Dire 51".
• Compile's little round mascot has appeared under two different names: Randar (Golvellius: Valley of Doom) and Lander (The Guardian Legend).
• Seen on the title screen of Harvest Moon 64: "©1999 Natume Inc." The company is more commonly translated as Natsume, although both "tsu" and "tu" are valid transliterations of the kanji in question.
• In Magical Cannon Wars none of the characters have the same name in the dialogue as they do in the credits so apparently nobody could decide what their names were.
• In the manual of Space Harrier 3-D, Uriah is spelled "Euria."
• Kaidan Alenko from Mass Effect often has his name spelled "Kaiden" by both Mass Effect fans and even BioWare themselves.

---

Back to Spell My Name with an "S"