@Keba Si Rota:

It makes me cringe sometimes x.x or like Me On instead of Mion (higurashi)...it could possibly be for fans too. Like my mom for example, (total country hick) she couldnt say Misa Misas name it was always Miss-a or Saa-Toeshi instead of Satoshi = correcting her never helped. It just made her angry. Come to think of it, she couldnt say my highschool nick name either lol it was Raziel. She always said Razzyel x.x

@SmallxLady:

That's a good point about the voice actors. It seems that not much has changed with messing up pronunciations, even though dubs are using the original names now. Take a look at "Nay-RU-to" for example.

I think one reason they used to change names was for the voice actors too. Look at cardcaptors for example they pronounced the main characters name wrong... saKURa....not even close or Alice Academy calling Mikan MiCAN as in soda can....-sighs-

As for name changes, Sailor moon, Digimon, Pokemon, Bayblade, Yugioh, I feel like Im missing a lot....I want to say Zoids but Im not 100% on that one. I never watched he subed version. Thats all I can think of right off hand

Small Lady

@Keba Si Rota:

You're welcome! Haha, it's a tongue-twister! BeybladeBleybade!! XD

I had to change their names. I left Reka's name alone (because it was the least difficult), but his friends Daisuke and Katsushiro turned into Danny and Ken, and Daisuke's mom, Mrs. Furujima, became Mrs. Phillips.

Whoops, I knew it was one of those. ^^;

@kita mikichi:

I hardly know a thing about Beyblade, so thanks for bringing that to my attention. In fact, all I know is how to mispronounce the title ("Bleybley"). It's a long story.

When you wrote that side story, what did you have to change?

It took me awhile, but I remember that conversation. Although, it was FictionPress that was the site in question.

@Keba Si Rota:

Yup, pretty much every anime I saw growing up had the names changed. Beyblade is another example, with the lead characters changed from Takao Kinomiya to Tyson Granger, Max Mizuhara to Max Tate and Kyouju to Kenny (only the spelling of Rei's name changed, and Kai Hiwatari was kept completely the same).

Thanks to an Eternal Rain side-story I wrote for a creative writing class in high school, I know how it feels to have to de-construct your work for a closed-minded audience. It is not fun. I think we might've talked about that before. XD Oh, yeah, when you talked about how a large portion of the FanFiction.net community is brutal to anything with Japanese names in it. So I'm sure the the original creators of English-adapted anime can't be too happy with those results, either.

@elricbrothersfan:

Yes, I know. I guess I didn't convey that well.

The thing about Attack on Titan is, if I'm not mistaken, they named the characters English names but transliterated them into Japanese, preserving pronunciation (to some degree). That's actually kind of popular nowadays in anime and manga. Look at Ed and Al Elric: their Japanese names are Edowādo Erurikku and Arufonsu Erurikku, respectively.

@ItachiSasuke:

Glad that I could write something that you think is thought-provoking. Thanks for reading!

Your title got me intrigued ^^ so I read it all~
I think it's interesting when they change the names to more English-based names, however, I think it's good to keep the original name. I can imagine that for earlier animes, changing the names to English names would be easier for kids, but even nowadays, kids are getting introduced to different cultures early on.
It also depends on where the manga artist thinks the manga is taking place. I believe that it was mentioned that in Attack on Titan, the country that it was taking place wasn't in Japan, but more in the German area.
Wow, this has really got me thinking even more! xD Thanks for the interesting post Keba!