English or Japanese names?

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English or Japanese names?

Postby Thoul » Thu Nov 20, '08, 10:45 pm

As you all probably know, when games are brought out in English markets, the character names are often changed. Sometimes the changes are small, other times they're totally bizzare, like Fal to Rika or Thray to Rune. In general, do you prefer the English names or the Japanese names? Are there exceptions, where you reverse that stance, and if so, what are some of those?
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Postby Schala Zeal » Thu Nov 20, '08, 11:03 pm

It depends. Sometimes I prefer the English names. "Fal?" :? It's not just the odd sounding Japanese names either. I used to always prefer the Japanese names, until I read Fruits Basket. With the thousands of different nicknames and honorifics that they were using, it was extremely difficult for me to follow. Even without the nicknames and the honorifics, it was kind of taxing for me to go through something with really foreign sounding names.

However, there are many cases when I prefer the Japanese names. I remember that there was a Yu Yu Hakusho movie that was dubbed long ago. Yusuke became "Eugene", Atsuko became "Victoria", someone became "Vincent", etc. :S

...Looking at my post, it seems that I'm unhappy in either case. :lol: I'll usually just get used to what I see first (which usually happens to be the English version); Cress as opposed to Cless (Yes, I prefer Cress), Stahn as opposed to Stan, Alis as opposed to Alisa, Shir as opposed to Shilka, etc.

I'm usually fine with both Japanese names and English names, but I will get a little mad when people go, "OH MY GOSH, IT'S CLESS NOT CRESS YOU N00B!!!111!" Then I prefer the opposite of what they like. :P
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Postby Celeith » Thu Nov 20, '08, 11:08 pm

I sometimes perfer the japanese names such as Eusis over Rolf. With Stan in Japan if he was here it would be Stan (stand without the d) so when ToD came out so many years ago it was a good thing they added the H in his name, I've always pronounced it like Stahn anyways. Cless or Cress it doesn't really matter but the one thing that kinda annoyed me was the transition from Klarth to Claus.
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Postby Lemina » Thu Nov 20, '08, 11:35 pm

I usually prefer the English names. I often find that the JP names are kind of odd, for my tastes. Fal?(PSIV) Wayu?(FE POR) Garcia? (GS: TLA) Mostly though, I don't care either way. As long as the game's story has an excellent translation, I care little about something as small (to me) as a character name.
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Postby Thoul » Fri Nov 21, '08, 12:00 am

I tend to prefer what I see first as well. Usually that will be the English names for me, too. The honorifics and such in Japanese usually get me all mixed up.

Schala Zeal wrote:I'm usually fine with both Japanese names and English names, but I will get a little mad when people go, "OH MY GOSH, IT'S CLESS NOT CRESS YOU N00B!!!111!" Then I prefer the opposite of what they like. :P


Heh, yeah, those people really need to chill out.
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