Proper Spellings for Character Names

[LeClefLame]

The way the name Aerith was misspelled as Aeris in FF7, many of the character names in FF6 are either misspelled or changed completely.

Terra==>Tina
Locke==>Lock
Sabin==>Mash
Cyan==>Kaien
Strago==>Stragus

[maybee]

Aerith is different though because her English translation was always supposed to be Aerith. While Terra, Cyan, Sabin etc have always been the official English names for them.

[Wolf Kanno]

Honestly, the VI and IV names only stayed the way they did because it was years later fans learned the names were wrong and by then, they had become to ingrained. Like Aerith had her name changed back as early as the Kingdom Heart series four years after VII's release.

Aerith is an issue of the translator doing a poor job translating her name, VI's changes are partly due to a combination of space limitations being limited to six characters in English forcing a change such as Cyan and Strago's names being shortened from Cayenne and Stragus respectively. Terra/Tina on the other hand is a localization change. Tina sounds exotic in Japanese but it's an uncommon name at best in Western circles, so Terra was chosen instead to give her a more mythological and mystical sounding name. The only two that don't really make a whole lot of sense are Lock/Locke and Mash/Sabin.

Locke's real name is Lock which is an obvious pun concerning his job, technically Locke is not terribly different in name origin either. Maybe Woosley felt it would look less weird with the e while still retaining the same joke. Sabin is a different story, I've seen the katakana of his name translated as Matthew, Matias, and Macias with the "Mash" either being a weird respelling of Matt or just a bad shortening of the other name. Technically Macias is an old Spanish pronunciation of the Jewish word for Messiah which could be a potential reason for the name getting nixed but is unlikely cause I doubt any ten year old playing on the North American continent would be able to tell you that unless they had direct connections to the name origins. Matt doesn't sound too often and it's possible Woosley either thought it was too boring for a fantasy game similar to Tina or he simply didn't translate it well enough to get it could possibly be his name. Oddly, his Western name is Italian for "Man from the Sabines". An interesting thing I did learn, which may actually be an amusing coincidence is that there are two lesser known operas one named Edgar and the other Macias, which falls into their last name being a famous opera and the game's overall theme of opera. I doubt that was the intention of their names but it's a funny coincidence regardless.

Kefka also has a different spelling though its pronounced the same regardless.