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If you’ve played Final Fantasy VII you’d have met Aerith.
Or, is it Aeris?
you’ll see her, but she’ll have two names.
Why would this happen?
It’s a simple cause, really.
Pronunciation and translation.
If Aeris’ name was supposed to be Aerith when she was written into Final Fantasy VII,
it would make sense that the Japanese pronounciation and “katakana-ized” version of AeriTH would be AerIS.
In Japanese, there is no “TH” sound.
The closest the Japanese language can get to the sound is “S.”
It would make sense, then, for her to have two versions of her name.
Aeris is how you would pronounce it if you were Japanese and in Japan,
but the Romanized spelling would still be Aerith, with the "TH."
The same thing happens with other words.
The name Jonathan is pronounced Jona”san” in Japanese.
But this doesn’t change the name itself, it just is how it is pronounced in Japan.
Now, “San” may seem to make more sense for “Jonathan”
since there is an “a” sound to attach to the “s” that substitutes the “th.” JonaSAn, Jonathan.
So why would “Aerith” becomes “Aeris”?
If you’ve ever watched anime, a drama, or listened to a Japanese song, you’ll know the word “desu.”
Grammatically, you would expect to pronounce the “S-U” sound as “Su.” However, you’ll usually hear “desu” as “des."
Much like in English how words sorta morph into a different sound than how it’s written,
it still has the same meaning and won’t change the spelling of it to accommodate this easier way of speaking.
So, sort of becomes "sorta" and desu becomes "des."
So, now you can say you learned from gaming some basics of Japanese all thanks to Aerith, or Aeris!