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Which one?

  • Aeris

    Votes: 256 25.9%
  • Aerith

    Votes: 732 74.1%

  • Total voters
    988

Blade24070

Member
Oct 26, 2017
7,002
This is the biggest head scratcher in gaming to me. People insisting on a name that's pronounced almost exactly like heiress and have the nerve to say Aerith sounds more pretentious lmao. And also the fact that she's been Aerith since Kingdom Hearts 1, almost 20 years ago. Unless you played FFVII on release and have not consumed a single bit of media related to the game since then, you have no excuse.

Also that recent OG FFVII preview thread had tons of previews calling her Aerith, so weird that it still ended up Aeris in the game.
 

Jakenbakin

Member
Jun 17, 2018
11,812
Aeris was better, but I've given up. I quietly continued the fight in denial for years through spinoffs and films cameos, but now that the remake is here it's kind of pointless.
 

J_ToSaveTheDay

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
18,821
USA
I prefer Aerith but either is fine. Growing up with an English-as-second-language mom of Asian descent (Korean to be exact), I kinda already knew about the interchangeability between "-th" and "-s" in that particular language, and I had just enough exposure to Japanese language at the time to notice the same thing there.

To me, both are just correct, though I admit I don't really try to go out of my way to pronounce "Aerith" the Japanese (and Korean) way when I say it — I say it just like the dub actors do in FFVII Remake.
 

MrCibb

Member
Dec 12, 2018
5,349
UK
Can't remember what I originally called her, probably Aeris, but I referred to her as Aerith as soon as I realized that's the correct name.

Not sure why people dig their heels in on this, especially since there's a correct answer. Is it ego? If I was saying someone's name wrong and then they corrected me, I'd say the correct name. I wouldn't go "Yeah but when I was 10 years old I said it like that so I'm just going to keep saying it wrong mate."
 

Knight613

Member
Oct 25, 2017
20,767
San Francisco
Can't remember what I originally called her, probably Aeris, but I referred to her as Aerith as soon as I realized that's the correct name.

Not sure why people dig their heels in on this, especially since there's a correct answer. Is it ego? If I was saying someone's name wrong and then they corrected me, I'd say the correct name. I wouldn't go "Yeah but when I was 10 years old I said it like that so I'm just going to keep saying it wrong mate."
Apparently because it's not a real person it's totally fine.

The people who say Aeris just because that's how it was when they played the original are like the people who insist that Han shot first.
 

Razorrin

Member
Nov 7, 2017
5,236
the HELP Menu.
Aeris is what I grew up with and is an objectively superior name to Aerith. I will never change. Aerith is so terrible.
This conversation has always been about how, as long as you can accept that Aerith is the OFFICIAL NAME, then nobody cares or minds that you prefer Aeris. Aeris is a lovely name! I think it's great!

It's just not what that character was actually supposed to be called, that's all. You can call her Aeris in private all you want, even in public or to your friends, but everyone acting like freaking Truthers about a fictional video game character's name needs to get some perspective.

This isn't to you, but to others who can't let up.

Is it that important? Do you need to trash the people who made the character for being wrong about how the mistranslated name isn't correct? People who, despite your menistrations, know what they named her that, and are not wrong just because you don't like it? To continue to be obstinate about the "Correct" name when you can just as easily leave it at "it's the name I perfer" and move on with your life?

Because I can tell you now that you are allowed to believe something is better or preferable, but it doesn't change objective fact, and constantly getting more and more combative over something so freaking trivial will most certainly lead to both stress and social derision, both things that will make you unhappy and lead to even More Combative Behaviour over even More trivial things.

Just learn to say things in a less shitty way, it screws up the forum and screws up your life.
 

crimilde

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,004
Both transliterations have basis, as the Japanese "su" (ス) is used when transcribing "s" (/s/) and "th" (/θ/) to Japanese. However, official Japanese material uses the spelling "Aerith", and developers have stated that "Aerith" is a near-anagram of "Earth".

Do people who call her Aeris also pronounce Earth as Ears?
 

BayonettasBuddy

Lead Producer at Cold Symmetry
Verified
Oct 30, 2017
233
Aeris for me, because that's what I played 100+ hours in multiple playthroughs on FFVII as a kid.
Also I like to pretend it was a subtle nod to Ares, the Greek god of war.
 

Sanctuary

Member
Oct 27, 2017
14,226
The people who say Aeris just because that's how it was when they played the original are like the people who insist that Han shot first.

Not the best analogy, since taking an established character and arc and completely ruining it isn't quite the same as a simple name change that was an error to begin with. Stubborn people are going to be stubborn, but you can also be stubborn and right about stupidity.

Aeris for me, because that's what I played 100+ hours in multiple playthroughs on FFVII as a kid.
Also I like to pretend it was a subtle nod to Ares, the Greek god of war.

I never thought it was any kind of intentional nod to Ares (unless they were trying to be super ironic, that wouldn't have made any sense anyway), but the name always did remind me of that god.
 

Mendrox

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
9,439
Air Riff, say that fast.

I'm surprised some of you stubborn ones don't call him Sephiros, does that sound like a real name too?

I mean that would be legit because Sephiroth (you know the tree) is often spelled like this:

סְפִירָה səfīrā Sefira, pl. סְפִירוֹת səfīrōt

Even in German it's the Ten Sefirot.
 

Bradford

terminus est
Member
Aug 12, 2018
5,423
I was thinking there might be like a 5 or 6 character limit on spell names but then you have stuff like DeBarrier or MBarrier which means they could've easily spelled Thunder.
It's not quite that simple -- for the translation patch I am working on at the moment, certain memory entries for text have higher tolerances than others, meaning some words can translate just fine and others I need to look for even smaller synonyms in order to "fit" them.

If I remember correctly, FF7's original translation was done with a similar set of memory hacks and tools, and there were a bunch of variable width issues that led to certain choices (like element spells being truncated). This was a holdover from older consoles as well.

Kuraudo, please.
Kuraudo Suturaifu
Not to be pedantic, but it's SuTOraifu.

Tu isn't a common phoneme in Japanese.
 

Brohan

The Fallen
Oct 26, 2017
2,544
Netherlands
I still prefer Aeris. It's what I'm used to since I played FF7 to death as a kid and it was pretty much my all time favorite game. I also think it sounds better and is easier to say.
 

Riversands

Banned
Nov 21, 2017
5,669
That was no more an insult than your original comment was.
The op said that people got used to call her aerisu. Doesnt make any sense, because her name contains a syllabel of the word Earth. And i explained it just because it is a habit it doesnt make it more right. Whats wrong with that?

Also that guy and i had not so good history together. He and i argued once in this forum and it never resolved until now, so there is a context for that
 

Deleted member 37739

User requested account closure
Banned
Jan 8, 2018
908
When I played it as a kid, she was Aeris and I'll probably always think of her that way. I'm not about to fight anyone over it but there's a charm in things like translation errors, something you don't see so much these days (because everything is passed through about fifteen rounds of approvals) - heck, my own surname is a mis-spelled version of a far more common and historically popular one.
 

Deleted member 1102

Account closed at user request
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
13,295
On the PS4 port for me it defaults it to Aeris but ever since the remake I've just been calling her Aerith
 

Kaguya

Member
Jun 19, 2018
6,408
I'd be fine if they called her Aristimus the 3rd, this team wrote the best version of her, they get to decide what's her name is, not you, you silly entitled fan operating on nostalgia.
 
OP
OP
Hate

Hate

Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,730
The op said that people got used to call her aerisu. Doesnt make any sense, because her name contains a syllabel of the word Earth. And i explained it just because it is a habit it doesnt make it more right. Whats wrong with that?

Also that guy and i had not so good history together. He and i argued once in this forum and it never resolved until now, so there is a context for that
I made the thread in lighthearted jest. I'm not arguing about what's right or not since I know Aerith is the correct one. For me it's just nostalgia and Aeris rolls off the tongue better.

You and I argued? I certainly can't remember but hopefully we can come to a closure and leave the bad blood behind. If I did anything offensive, I apologize.
 

Cheerilee

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
3,969
So what though? They created the character. They decide how to spell the name. You might not like how they choose to spell it but that doesn't mean they're wrong for spelling it that way.
I remember reading the Area 88 manga, and in the translation notes they mentioned that a certain American pilot's name was "officially romanized" in Japan as "Mickey Scymon". So the translators changed that to "Mick Simon", because "Scymon" was just a mess, and because they felt that the "cool" character would rather use a nickname than a name that was so strongly connected to something childish and fun like Disney.

Was that a translation error? Did Studio Proteus offend the great fictional American house of Scymon?

AD Vision changed his name halfway back to "Mickey Simon" for the anime translation. Was that a correction? Did Studio Proteus overreach by shortening his name?

Did Kaoru Shintani (the Area 88 manga creator) request or sign off on any of these changes? Did Square of Japan step in and request that Aeris be changed to Aerith? Or was this (the Aeris/Aerith thing) decided by two different translation teams? If Square of Japan did step in, why hasn't Square changed "Terra" back to "Tina" yet? Is Square of Japan really okay with Square of America changing Butz's name to "Bartz" (Simpson)?

Her look was pretty different between FF7 and KH onwards, so I have a wall in my head that splits Aeris/Aerith depending on where I see her.

That said, it's no question that "Aeris" is based on a miscommunication between the developers and translator. Nevertheless, FF7 turned out to be a massively popular game with iconic characters that were loved all over the world, so Squenix should have just sucked it up and owned Aeris as her English name instead of trying to retcon it and keep people arguing 20+ years later.
This argument was already pretty loud, long before the retcon.

IMO, "Aeris" was fine, and Square should've left well enough alone. And "Aerith" has a useless "i" in there (her "correct" name should be Aerth, IMO), so it's still "wrong". Her name changed from wrong to wrong. It's just a big old can of worms.
 

astro

Member
Oct 25, 2017
56,954
The op said that people got used to call her aerisu. Doesnt make any sense, because her name contains a syllabel of the word Earth. And i explained it just because it is a habit it doesnt make it more right. Whats wrong with that?

Also that guy and i had not so good history together. He and i argued once in this forum and it never resolved until now, so there is a context for that
The thread is not supposed to be serious, and to me your comment is a little condescending as much as that other post is an insult. Really, though, both comments are fairly innocuous on a board like this, which was my main point.

Knowing you have a history there, I could see how their comment might be designed to antagonize you though.
 

mute

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 25, 2017
25,091
I have still spent a lot more time playing a game where her name was Aeris rather than Aerith so I'm going to still stick with that.
 

kenshee

Member
Nov 8, 2017
64
Aerith here, but most of my ff 7 experience came from compilation/kingdom hearts until now really. Also in my language I'd either pronounce it Aerit or Aeris even if it's written Aerith anyways, th is hard to pronounce '^^
I also can't blame people who prefer Aeris at all. (still tide-us to me, get out of here teedus)
 

Launchpad

Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,161
I've said Aerith since I discovered that's what it was supposed to be 20 years ago. Can't remember if Kingdom Hearts was the first time I discovered that?
 

Trisc

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,488
They were also probably given a bunch of no-context lines on a spreadsheet, and not a lot of time to translate them.

Tim Rogers did an amazing video series analyzing the original localization if you haven't seen it. Goes into excruciating and fascinating detail.
I've seen it, and it's quite amazing. Rogers' enthusiasm for localization is part of what spurred me on to study Japanese again after stopping once I had basic reading comprehension.
I don't know what you're talking about. Fire2 and Fire3 sound way better than Fira and Firaga.
Dilly dally shilly shally.
 
May 26, 2018
24,020
Dilly dally shilly shally.

tenor.gif
 

AlexFlame116

Prophet of Truth - One Winged Slayer
Member
Nov 17, 2017
23,182
Utah
I'm guessing the people who continue to call her Aeris would insist on keeping Bartz as Butz if Butz was the name in FFV with Bartz being added later.
 

thecaseace

Member
May 1, 2018
3,219
I kind of don't understand why people insist on using a different to the one they read on the screen when they played it?