No, Japanese have no sound for 'L' in their language, so they have trouble pronouncing it. A good example is in the Japanese Sailormoon cartoons, they pronounce it 'Sera' (say-ra). Cloud would be pronounced 'Croud' or something to that effect. The fact that they pronounced Aerith as 'Aeris' could have been the reason why it was changed in the English version, again citing Sailormoon as an example (apologies to everyone), the original name of the Moon Queen was 'Selenity', and of course it was pronounced 'Serenity', so when it was dubbed they changed the official English name to 'Serenity'.