A Rose by Any Other Name...YGO by ~Golden-Dragon-Girl on deviantART
On the virtues of the dub names versus calling everyone their original names:
As readers of this blog may have noticed, those of us working on YnY follow what is best described as a "mixed canon," taking tidbits from not only both the manga and anime but also picking and choosing from the Japanese and English language versions of the anime.
Most significantly, we use the dub names but mostly adhere to the Japanese timeline and ages.
I am aware that many anime purists regard the preferential use of dub names as utter blasphemy, perhaps the highest form of it. I also don't give a damn, because my reasons for using the dub names are as perfectly acceptable as the reason my family uses a slightly different surname than the one we would have used in Denmark.
1. Dub names, when done well, make unusual characters more accessable to a different language audiance. When I say "done well," I mean the characters are renamed things like "Téa" (a slightly exotic but pretty and pronounceable Spanish name) or "Joseph" (a biblical name that doesn't interfere with the wordplay involved with the word Yu-Jyo) instead of the slew of weird, distinctly British names that were given to all the GX characters with American accents (except for Jesse and his southern drawl.)
2. A lot of the names Kazuki Takahashi gave characters were, quite frankly, weird. I'm not even talking about the Japanese characters. Be honest, can you imagine any sane, supposedly "respectable" American businessman naming his son "Pegasus?" "James," certainly. "Maximillion" is still a bit unusual, but it's believable. And it still gives similar connotations to what I suspect Takahashi had been going for in the first place. Don't even get me started on "Cyndia" and "Cadeline." Those are supposed to be "Cynthia" and "Catherine," and you all know it, bastards.
3. No English speakers I know but me have penetrated the deeper meaning of the name "Mai Kujaku." "Mai Valentine" may be punny, but none of us had to look at plant catalogues to get the joke. ("Mai Kujaku," or rather, "Kujaku Mai," refers to a breed of sakura tree, if I remember right. It actually has nothing to do with peacocks at all.)
4. The odd mixture of Japanese and non-Japanese names adds a multi-ethnic flavor to the culture of the series that I happen to like very much.
5. Roger Slifer was a producer of the 80's Transformers series. Anyone who helped bring that monstrosity to the attention of the world at large has earned getting a God Card named after him.
6. Because Duke Devlin just sounds way cooler than Otogi whatever-it-was. And more Irish. You have to love the Irish.
7. Changing names of characters is a time honored tradition that predates the Roman Empire. So is changing names of people when they move somewhere new, and it's a related issue.
8. Because "Honda Hiroto" sounds like a car to American ears. (E.g., to mine.)
9. Because BELIEVE IT OR NOT, they dropped a lot of the original names I hate and kept most of the ones I like. Except Kujaku, because I do like that word. But I deal with it because they needed to keep a joke in there that viewers would understand.
10. Because I'm a prick, that's why.
I admit it: listening to people whine about dub names when they should be complaining about fundamental changes to story or to characters, like making Rebecca more impressive by youthening her or making Kaiba less impressive (and somewhat nonsensical) by aging him, or complaining about inconsistent dubbing, a real problem in YGO, really bores and irritates me.
(Kaiba is made nonsensical by aging because, if he were REALLY eighteen, what's he doing in Yugi-the-fifteen-year-old's homeroom? That would imply that the great CEO of KaibaCorp has been held back in his classes, multiple times, making his status as a high school student and businessman not just unusual but bizarre.)
Incedentally, some interesting tidbits on dub name meanings:
"Téa," so far as I could tell, means "princess." It is also the name of Téa Leoni, who costarred in the movie "Spanglish," which I would say pretty much verifies its authenticity as a name.
"Joseph," as I noted, is biblical, and it means "God will multiply." This has nothing to do with my decision to give him five children, I swear.
I couldn't trace "Tristan" exactly, but it seems to be a form of "Tristram," which means "sorrow" and was the name of a knight in an old story who was torn between two women.
All the surnames of those particular characters are English and refer to occupations, as if they were following a deliberate theme when renaming Yugi's support group.
It's pretty obvious what "Duke" means, but "Devlin" is a Gaelic name that means "fierce." Rocking.
There was a kid named Underwood in my high school. I can't say I ever met him.
"Odion" means "born of twins." There are several Egyptian names that the book I found it in claims mean "born of twins," and no matter how many times I see it, the meaning of the phrase "born of twins" continues to mystify me. (His name was probably changed on account of being too distinctly Arabic.)
"Maximillion" means "the greatest."
"Cecilia" means "blind." 8X
"Alister" apparently refers to a name rather big in the occult-- It is also a form of "Alexander" and means "defender of man." His name was probably changed because the name "Amelda" is stupid. And doesn't mean anything. At all.
"Solomon" is also a biblical name, associated with the wisest mortal found in the Book, and means "peaceful."
"Serenity" and "Shizuka" apparently mean approximately the same thing, which means it was just another example of the dubbers trying to make the series more accessable to an english speaking audience.
"Mai" may be her name in Japanese as well, but it is also a Native American name that means "Coyote," a Scottish form of Margaret (which means "pearl"), and can be taken as a form of "Mary," which means "bitter." In Japanese, "Mai" means "Dance," which means that "Kujaku Mai" translates literally into "Peacock Dance." "Valentine" of course was chosen for its connotations of romance, and the "my valentine" pun, but it's actually a Latin name that means "valiant." Pretty much all of these name meanings can be taken to apply to the character, which is weirdly cool.
Approximately half of the characters in the YGO:DM dub (That's the one most of us Americans think of as Yu-Gi-Oh!) either kept some form of their original names or their dub names refer to their original names. A good majority of the ones that got their names changed have easily divined reasons the names did change. (Lip flap, lingual jokes, accessibility, and the horror of listening to American VAs mispronounce Sogakoru, which I am quite confident I have misspelled.)
In fact, it's easier to explain why the names that got changed got changed than it is to explain why Seto and Mokuba Kaiba's names didn't change! (I figure they kept them because they were cool. And, you know, they couldn't very well change the title character's name without changing the name of the show, and maybe they didn't want poor Yugi to stand alone in the Japanese name department. XD)
