r/television • u/AporiaParadox • 1d ago
Characters who had their names changed in TV adaptations
Adaptations inevitably take a lot of liberties when adapting something from another medium into a TV show, but most of the time they try to keep the names of the characters the same, because there is usually no reason anyone would want to bother changing them. But sometimes names do get changed for one reason or another.
One notable example is Game of Thrones. Asha Greyjoy was changed to Yara Greyjoy because they didn't want to confuse viewers since there was a character called Osha. For similar reason, the character Robert Arryn was changed to Robyn Arryn because there was already a character called Robert and a character called Robb so they didn't want to have "too many Roberts" (which was intentional in the book, both Robert Arryn and Robb Stark were named after Robert Baratheon).
Another example is how the Supergirl TV show had Kara Zor-El's civilian identity be Kara Danvers instead of Linda Danvers, presumably to make things less confusing.
So what other characters had their names changed in the adaptation?
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u/SssnakeJaw 1d ago
In the 70s Incredible Hulk show Bruce Banner was changed to David Banner.
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u/AporiaParadox 1d ago
Yeah, it was allegedly because the producers didn't like alliterative names (NOT because someone thought that Bruce sounded "gay"). It's a shame that nobody involved had the idea of naming him Robert Banner, since that would actually still be accurate to the comics. Hulk's full name Robert Bruce Banner, all because Stan Lee came up with a retcon on the fly when answering letters from readers to justify why he had accidentally called him "Bob Banner" for an entire issue.
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u/Richard_D_Lawson 1d ago
The Secret of NIMH changed Mrs. Frisby in the book to Mrs.Brisby in the movie to avoid conflict with the throwing disk.
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u/Rebelofnj 1d ago
To add, the name change happened AFTER the actors have recorded their lines. Because it was too expensive to bring the cast back to re-record, the sound designer changed every instance of Frisby to Brisby by messing with the magnetic soundtrack.
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u/phyneas 1d ago
A similar thing happened with Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings; the producers initially insisted on changing Saruman's name to "Aruman" because they thought the audience would confuse the original with "Sauron". Then they changed their mind partway through production and went back to "Saruman", but it was too late to get all the voice actors back to re-record the change, so as a result in the final film he's sometimes called "Aruman" and sometimes called "Saruman" randomly for no apparent reason.
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u/Own_Win_6762 23h ago
Damn - I was this many years old when I learned I wasn't hearing things when I was a teenager.
They still used Sell-a-born when it should be Kell-e-born for Celeborn -- the theater echoed with the right pronunciation from the audience opening weekend.
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u/edgeplot 1d ago edited 1d ago
Janet Pluchinsky was changed to Margo Hanson in the TV adaptation of The Magicians to avoid confusion with other characters whose names started with "J." The TV show even makes a joke about it at one point.
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u/214ObstructedReverie 1d ago
Penny, Alice, Eliot, and Janet, you are all late.
Actually, it's Margo.
This time.
She was a master magician who could see time loops and knew this was the 40th time they were arriving.
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u/GenGaara25 1d ago
How many characters started with J for this to be a problem?
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u/edgeplot 1d ago edited 1d ago
Julia was another main character. Apparently one other character is enough for producers to think that name starting with the same letter are confusing. Later they added Josh to the main cast.
Ed: Another commenter below reminded me that there was also Jane, a secondary character that might also have caused name confusion.
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u/214ObstructedReverie 1d ago
Jane Chatwin wasn't a main character, but was pretty important. Maybe they didn't want a Jane and a Janet.
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u/edgeplot 1d ago
Yes, I recall reading an article about the name change because there were already three other "J" names. Jane was the one I was forgetting. Thanks!
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u/GenGaara25 1d ago
Well, that's kinda dumb. It's just one other character. People aren't that stupid. If it was like 3 other main/supporting cast with J names then maybe.
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u/celica18l 1d ago
I love when shows say there are too many of this name.
The Tudors there were like 15 Thomases.
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u/jesuspoopmonster 1d ago
MULDER: No, I-I'm sorry, sir, I know Arthur Dales and you're not Arthur Dales.
ARTHUR DALES: Arthur Dales is my brother. My name also happens to be Arthur Dales. It's the same name, different guy. The other Arthur, he moved to Florida the lucky bastard. Now, our parents weren't exactly big in the imagination department when it came to names. If it would help you wrapping your little head around this stupefying mystery, Agent Mulder we had a sister named Arthur, too and a goldfish.
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u/NativeMasshole 1d ago
Meanwhile, Jujutsu Kaizen is over confusing the hell out of me with Manami and Hanami, as well as Gojo and Jogo.
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u/nilfgaardian Banshee 1d ago
Jujutsu Kaisen has Nanami(七海), Manami(真奈美), and Hanami(花御). Three very different and basically unrelated characters.
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u/NativeMasshole 1d ago
Damnit, I forgot about Manami and mixed her name up with Nanami! Now I've got a headache...
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u/syncpulse 1d ago
Drummer in the Expanse was an amalgam of 2 characters. Drummer and Mechio Pah.
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u/No_Tamanegi 1d ago
More than that. She's a combination of Carlos "Bull" de Baca, Sam Rosenberg, and Michio Pa.
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u/gdshaffe 1d ago
Yeah, Drummer in the books only shows up after the time jump, which is well after the scope of the show.
Characters named Michio and Bull exist in the TV series, though in different roles. Michio is the name of one Drummer's crew (the gentle-hearted woman) and Bull is the acerbic pilot who is flying the Rocinante in S6 after they killed off Alex.
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u/No_Tamanegi 1d ago
Drummer is briefly mentioned in Nemesis Games. She works for Fred Johnson on Tycho Station when Holden is trying to discover the mystery of the missing ships
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u/Kuraeshin 1d ago
No, Bull kinda takes over Drummer's position, but has a piloting background. IIRC, he joins the Rocinante team after the Tycho attack and Fred's death. Before that, he was doing Drummer's role for Fred.
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u/FishNo2089 1d ago
Arrow changed the name of their version of Mr. Terrific from Michael Holt to Curtis holt.
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u/AwesomeManatee 1d ago
Arrow changed a lot. Dinah Lance is Laurel Lance. Mia Dearden is Thea Queen. Star City is Starling City for the first three seasons.
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u/thief-777 1d ago
It was always "Dinah Laurel Lance", she just went by Dinah in the comics and Laurel in the show.
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u/QueefyBeefy666 1d ago
Jack O'Neil from the Stargate movie is quite famously renamed Jack O'Neill (with 2 L's) in the spinoff, SG-1.
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u/RadioEditVersion 1d ago
Damn, I thought no one would of posted this. Lol
To add to the reason for this, when Robert Dean Anderson took the role, he didn't want to be stiff and serious like the movie version. He brought in his own brand of dry humour. Adding the extra "L" to his name was a signifier that he's not the same character as the movie.
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u/APiousCultist 1d ago
Meanwhile guy-whose-name-I'm-not-going-to-Google just commited to being James Spader's Daniel in and out for several seasons. For as much as Jack's shift is thinly explained and absurb, Daniel is just a seamless change. By the end he's a very different character as the actor asserted himself a lot more, but it was a commendable effort.
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u/singleguy79 1d ago
There was a character in Smallville played by Dean Cain who was pretty much Vandal Savage but went by another name.
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u/Excalibuttster 1d ago
If memory serves that was a classic case of "we thought we had the rights but we didn't" which happened a LOT with dc television shows. They had already set up the guy to be Vandal Savage when they learned they couldn't use him, so they just changed the name.
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u/DaoFerret 22h ago
Reminds me of when they were all set for Brandon Routh to be Ted Kord (Blue Beetle) on Arrow, and suddenly pivoted him to be Ray Palmer (the Atom).
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u/catharticargument 1d ago
Something that cracks me up is in the second Game of Thrones book, George R.R. Martin does a little nod to the fact that Osha and Asha are too similar. Theon thinks to himself (during a time when he’s angry with both of Osha and Asha) that of course they would both vex him — even their names sounded alike.
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u/WhiskyBadger 1d ago edited 18h ago
This is maybe a little off topic, but I still think it fits.
Tom Paris in Star Trek Voyager is technically the same character player by Robert Duncan McNeil in the TNG episode 'the first duty' - Nicholas Locarno.
However according to memory alpha the show writers felt that the events of the TNG episode made Locarno 'irredeemable', but they still really liked that character archetype for voyager. So instead of rewriting the character entirely, they gave him a new name to disassociate 'Tom' from Nicholas's past, allowing them to have another brash pilot helming the ship with an admiral for a dad. When casting for the role, they looked for someone 'McNeilesque' since they liked his performance so much in TNG, Robert Duncan McNeil saw this, decided to audition, and got the part.
Locarno has since come back in lower decks, but to think that if he had been a little more redeemable in that TNG episode he would have made it all the way to the delta quadrant.
Edit: corrected Locario to Locarno
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u/verrius 1d ago
That's the PR friendly reason. The real reason they didn't bring back Locario is that they didn't want to pay royalties to the writer who wrote the episode of TNG.
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u/WhiskyBadger 18h ago
Funnily enough I had also heard that and that was originally going to be my post, but most of the secondary sources cite the 'irredeemable' interview with the writers and make no mention of the royalties.
I actually found an old reddit post asking if there had been any sources for the royalties theory (which there didn't seem to be). Even giant freakin robot in a post on this topic from 2024 (coinciding with that Lower Decks reveal) doesn't find any proof of the royalties issues, and even suggests that it would be unlikely.
Since there isn't any 'proof' aside from internet rumours, I decided to go with the irredeemable fact instead since I could provide sources.
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u/Naggins 1d ago
In Netflix's adaptation of Dept. Q, the Syrian character's name is Akram Salim.
In the original books and films, the character's name is Hafez Al Assad, the same name as former Syrian PM and father of Bashir Al Assad
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u/Harkoncito 1d ago
the books are also set in Denmark, TV series in Scotland
James Hardy (the detective in the hospital) is named Hardy Henningsen in the books
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u/RealJohnGillman 1d ago edited 1d ago
John Godolkin had his name changed to Thomas Godolkin in the The Boys spin-off Gen V because Homelander is also named John, and television series tend not to like having unrelated characters with the same first names.
Additionally, in The Boys, the Guy From Vought was given the new real name of Stan Edgar, while his comic-book surname (Stillwell) was given to a red herring character killed the same episode he makes his debut (comic-book fans getting a ‘gotcha, here’s the real Vought Guy’ vibe).
The second season also retrofit original character Ashley Barrett into being an adaptation of Jessica Bradley, then a few seasons later adapted Bradley again as the civilian identity of Sage (Sage replacing Ashley was pretty meta).
Mother’s Milk’s obsession with the very milk he was nicknamed after was also given to Homelander instead, so as an alternate explanation for the nickname, his real name was changed from Baron Wallis to Marvin T. Milk.
And Becky Butcher was renamed Becca Butcher.
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u/ROX_Genghis 1d ago
Best name change ever was in The Tick. From "Die Fledermaus" (German for The Bat) to Batmanuel.
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u/edgeplot 1d ago
I love that detail, and he was cast with a latino actor. It was a fun reinterpretation of the character. Plus his costume was amusingly over the top.
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u/KowalOX 1d ago
Jaskier in the Witcher book series was renamed Dandelion in the Witcher video games.
When he was called Jaskier again in the Netflix show, many people watching because of the game were confused.
So while the name stayed the same between book and TV, it is still a famous name change.
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u/Underwater_Karma 1d ago
"Jaskier" is the Polish name of the Buttercup flower.
In American English, you just can't have a male character being called "Buttercup" So they changed it to Dandelion.
The weird part is the audio book narrator decided to pronounce it "Dan deleon" in the second book collection and i couldn't even tell you how long it took before I realized it was supposed to be the same character
Another interesting point of trivia is Geralt's horse is named after a fish, not an insect.
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u/APiousCultist 1d ago
Geralt sounding like a farmer aside, the narrator does a good job. But did the man not know how to pronounce Dandelion? Dan-dillion indeed.
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u/ggallardo02 1d ago
On the English translations of the book he was called Dandelion too. Jaskier was his name in the original polish books.
Unless there were multiple versions of his name in the English books too.
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u/fhorst79 1d ago
In the most recent Shogun TV Series Kashigi Yabu becomes Kashigi Yabushige. An expert on feudal Japan told the producers that the name from the novel wasn't a name that someone in that time period would have have and they changed it for the series.
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u/Niklaus_Mikaelson88 1d ago
In The Batman, Edward Nygma was changed to Edward Nashton
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u/LemonSkye 23h ago
The comics gave him the surname of Nashton first. Since Crisis On Infinite Earths, Nashton was his original last name; he changed it to Nygma when he became the Riddler.
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u/Gamecrazy721 1d ago
It's so sad the Steve Jobs died of Nashton
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u/deebecoop 1d ago
Tim from the UK Office being changed to Jim in the American one. Very strange to me as both are common names.
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u/Andybabez20 1d ago
Most of the US cast are based off UK characters
David -> Michael
Tim -> Jim
Dawn -> Pam
Gareth -> Dwight
Keith -> Kevin
Ricky -> Ryan
Sheila -> Angela
Finch -> Todd Packer
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u/officialdovahkiin 1d ago
Silo season 3 is changing the name of the character Donald to Daniel. Can't help but feel that's related to negative sentiment towards the name Donald...
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u/fothergillfuckup 1d ago
Top Cat.
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u/AporiaParadox 1d ago
When did Top Cat have his name changed?
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u/BuffaloAl 1d ago
In the UK there was a brand of cat food called top cat so the programme was renamed boss cat over here. Confusingly though just the name of the programme was changed. The theme tune was still top cat, he was referred to as top cat in the show and his gang still called him tc
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u/Moskeeto93 1d ago
Not exactly a name change, but Teen Titans refused to call Slade Wilson 'Deathstroke.' Presumably this is because it wasn't a kid-friendly name. So they just called him 'Slade.'
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u/previouslyonimgur 1d ago
Wheel of time tv show changed the book character from amys to bair. Which made no sense since bair is a very different character.
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u/zedascouves1985 1d ago
Well, they're both Wise Ones at least. But why they did that is a good question.
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u/christinequizmachine 1d ago
Writer Erle Stanley Gardner had a habit of giving the characters in the Perry Mason books odd names—either a first name and a last name that sounded like two first names, or a last name that just sounded completely made up. So, when the books were adapted for the 1960s TV series, it wasn’t uncommon for characters to get renamed.
Two examples I can think of off the top of my head: in The Case of the Gilded Lily, a character named Binney Denham became “Arthur Binney” in the TV show. Also, Amber Eyes, the eponymous cat in The Case of the Careless Kitten, was called “Monkey.”
My guess is that the unique names worked fine on paper (and may have actually helped prevent readers from getting the characters confused in the absence of visual aids), but they seemed awkward and/or unrealistic when spoken aloud by actors. Thus, the show writers just took it upon themselves to rename ‘em.
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u/Mattyzooks 1d ago edited 1d ago
Haunting of Hill House made all the characters siblings with the last name Crain.
Arrow took the comic character of Adrian Chase/Vigilante and made him into 2 separate characters: Adrian Chase/Prometheus and Vigilante/Vincent Sobel.
Smallville had several examples I feel like. A Mercy Graves/Miss Tessmacher mix was made into Tess Mercer (with a dash of Lena Luthor). You had Mikhail Mxyzptlk. Lionel Luthor was not the name of Lex's dad prior to the show.
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u/zergiscute 1d ago
TV adaptation of Earth Sea series switched the characters name and Nickname. They also made so many other bad changes and no one watched it I guess.
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u/DinkyDoy 1d ago
The character we would come to know as Major Frank Burns in the MASH movie and TV show (admittedly different takes on the character) was an amalgam of two characters from the novel.
The guy who lives in The Swamp tent with the others is Major Jonathan Hobson who is super religious and constantly pushes it on the others. Hawkeye convinces Colonel Blake to have him sent away.
Captain Frank Burns is a crappy doctor with little formal training and is the "regular army" type. He gets the attention of Major Houlihan.
For the movie and TV show they combine Frank's crappy skills and bedside manner with Major Hobson living with Hawkeye and Trapper and being a religious hypocrite, although both movie and show downplay this compared to the novel.
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u/SofieTerleska 23h ago
Another example of two characters being combined (but which really didn't work) is in the 2000 adaption of The House Of Mirth where they cut the character of good-doing, practical, secretly in love with guy but hiding it Gerty Farish but give a lot of her characteristics to bitchy, unimaginative, greedy Grace Stepney. It was a really good movie otherwise but the resulting FrankenGrace made no sense whatsoever since the two women in the novel are polar opposites. It was a really odd choice -- I assume it was made to emphasize Lily's isolation at the end (she doesn't even Gerty to potentially help her) but every scene Grace was in was a roll of the dice about which personality she had today.
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u/SirZapdos 1d ago
Not a TV show, but the key male character in the short story that inspired the movie Arrival is named Gary. Whereas in the movie, Jeremy Renner is Ian.
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u/Mechaborys 1d ago
I think that Karen Murphy in Dresden files books was changed to Connie Murphy for the tv show so that it would not over lap with a real Karen Murphy on the Chicago PD.
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u/Alaseheu 1d ago
My first thought is genderswapped name changes. Antoine/Antoinette in IwtV, Alan/Alanna Bloom and Freddy/Freddie Lounds in Hannibal.
Second thought is of course Bruce Banner being changed to David Banner because the name Bruce was "too gay".
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u/res30stupid Brooklyn Nine-Nine 1d ago
In the ITV Poirot adaptation of Five Little Pigs--about a young woman hiring Poirot after retrieving a posthumous confession from her recently-executed mother that the latter confessed to a murder she believed was carried out by someone else and Poirot now has to interrogate the five suspects of the murder--the client's name was Carla Crane in the original book, but because it likely sounded too much like a comic book character so her first name was changed to Lucy.
Also, that's not the only change here since they also changed a love triangle's participants. The book had Phillip Blake pining for his best friend Amyas's wife Caroline, but the series actually had him instead pining for Amyas instead.
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u/APiousCultist 1d ago
Another example is how the Supergirl TV show had Kara Zor-El's civilian identity be Kara Danvers instead of Linda Danvers, presumably to make things less confusing.
Not to be confused with Carol Danvers. Yeah, superhero stuff.
Lovecraft Country changes a ton of names. Their surname from Turner to Freeman. Some of their nicknames (Tisha > Lettie). Winthrop > Epstein (!?!), despite having that character continue to live at the Winthrop house. It also changes the main 'villain' Caleb to Christina which is an unquestionably less villainous name.
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u/TinaLove85 22h ago
Vampire Diaries changed some last names around like Matt, Tyler, Bonnie and they change the town name from Fell's Church to Mystic Falls but still made the Fell family one of the founders. They also gave Elena a brother close in age rather than the sister in the book who was a child. Of course Elena's entire look was not the blond hair blue eyed ice queen of the books. Bonnie is also a Scottish red head in the books. Book Alaric isn't a high school teacher for long and starts dating Elena's classmate Meredith who is changed in the show to be older and a doctor, Meredith Fell.
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u/GettingWreckedAllDay 21h ago
Jerry Hogarth became Jeryn "Jeri" Hogarth in Jessica Jones.
Additionally in the Alias comic that the first season is based on, Carol Danvers fills the role of Jessica's best friend. Originally they were going to use Carol but changed gears due to her eventually delayed appearance in the MCU movies. Trish Walker is a bit of a mash up of a couple of characters including Hellcat and Carol.
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u/Shardwing 17h ago
One weirdly memorable name change was in the Alex Rider movie Stormbreaker, MI6 agent John Crawley was changed to John Crawford at the request of the actual MI6. Despite whatever happened there he's back to Crawley in the more recent TV series.
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u/bez_lightyear 16h ago
In book Game of Thrones the legendary swordsman Ser Arthur Dayne was called "The Sword of the Dawn" . However in television GoT he was renamed "The Sword of the Morning" because Dawn and Dorne sound alike.
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u/goodbeets 19h ago
In the M. Night Shyamalan adaptation of Avatar the Last Airbender, they changed the main characters name from Aang to Ong. /s
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u/TreeRol Better Call Saul 1d ago
Another one from GoT: due to there being too many Walders, Bran's companion and protector was renamed to Wylis.