Aerith/Aeris

[seiferalmasy2]

Well that's cool I do prefer Aeris too :P The tough thing for me has been stopping myself from making things sound better in the retranslation we are doing...

Even ryu from this forum spotted 1 or 2 things where I had been lax. It isn't easy to do all the time

[Aerisfanatic]

I wonder if this was the reason her name was never mentioned out loud in AC or in KH1&2. Always referring to her as you, she, her, and even mother. It was kind of annoying since my brother always pronounced it like "Iris" and I wanted to see for sure.

Then when the first videos of Crisis Core were leaked on the internet (in Japanese) for the first time I heard her name spoken aloud when she introduced herself. Of course with Japanese pronunciation the "r" is slightly rolled, the "i" sounds like (ee), but since the "th" as mentioned before does not exist in Japanese, it was pronounced like an "s" which is most likely why the "error" happened. So saying that, "Aerith" isn't an English word, its not even a word to my knowledge.

So when I first heard her name out loud, I figured that it was the same way I had been pronouncing it all these year (except for the Japanese accent) so why change it based on the English?

So maybe the "th" was meant to be taken literal in English translations, and like I said I always thought that they changed her name in the North American version to avoid reading her name wrong or something. So although her name in English might be pronounced with the "th" sound, I will remain to say it with an "s" because that is the way I felt it was meant to sound coming to NA.

[seiferalmasy2]

Well the reason it was wrong is that su can be any number of things. katakana is limited. So without knowing it was supposed to be Earth anagram (like nanaki for anakin) they had no idea what it was supposed to be and they summised a latin origin, when in fact it was the english word Earth.

japanese are forced to pronounce it without the th, whereas we are not

Personally, I don't really mind. It won't change anything to me as long as the spelling is correct.

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

I can't think of a single occasion where a word has been Romanized from Japanese to be spelled with "th" but not also pronounced with it.

[seiferalmasy2]

I can't think of a single occasion where a word has been Romanized from Japanese to be spelled with "th" but not also pronounced with it.

me neither and that is the point