Tidus

[comma]

You can't change his name because the game has voice acting, and they couldn't let you name everyone, since everyone going by pronouns in spoken word would be confusing as hell. So they let you rename the main character, since that's all that really matters anyway.

or they could have done it Baten Kaitos style where there's literally just a short period of silence when the player name comes up in a voice conversation

Yeah, the Persona games have been doing that too, just omitting the name whenever it appears. It's kind of surprising how well that works. And you can always use pronouns if a sentence sounds too awkward without a name.

That breaks suspension of disbelief every time the character name comes up. I don't like the sound of that.