Mispronunciations

What are some character names (from anime/manga or even games) that you pronounce wrong? Or things you used to pronounce wrong before learning you were way-off. :P

For me, the only one that really stands out is Syaoran from Cardcaptor Sakura. I always saw his name romanized like that but didn't understand that there were different ways of romanizing, so I originally pronounced it right ("Shaoran") but then saw a site online say it was Say-oh-ran and I pronounced it that way for years. Likewise when I watched the dub I got angry at Kero pronouncing Sakura's name the way he did and much preferred sah-kurr-ah and then realized years later he was the only one who pronounced it right. 8|

I also pronounce Tidus's name wrong (from Final Fantasy X) as Tie-dus instead of tee-dus. And have no intention of fixing it because I think it sounds better this way. Oops.

And I just go out of my way to never say Simon's name from TTGL because I think it's dumb that it's not pronounced the same as the name in English. Even though apparently it comes from the Hebrew pronunciation and not English (hence the avoidance of the name rather than just steadfastly pronouncing it wrong on principle). But I do the steadfastly-pronouncing-it-"wrong" thing with Viral. :P

That's all I can think of for now! Will probably add more as I remember them and the topic progresses. :>

I pronounced Totoro as Tot-oar-oh for years because I'd never actually seen it. :( Then I finally watched it and realised I'd been saying it wrong the whole time.

And before I watched Kuroshitsuji I thought Ciel was pronounced sigh-el. Before Pandora Hearts, Xerxes was zer-zeez. But I don't ever talk to anyone irl about anime so luckily I've never said anything like that out loud. xD

There are some canon spellings of anime/manga character names that sound terrible because of the author's lack of ability to romanize well. Shiryu from One Piece becoming "Shilliew" is a pretty grievous example, and I'll always refer to him as Shiryu no matter what anyone else calls him.

L/R issues also abound, like Spice and Wolf's Horo becoming Holo canonically. It's just personal taste on my part, but Horo sounds about a million times better than "Holo" and so I'll keep using the R instead of the L. Some names even combine the two problems, like Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann's Yoko Ritona becoming Yoko Littner. Out of the force of many years of habit I'll always call her Ritona instead of Littner even though the second one is technically correct.

I used to say the words anime and manga as "ann-imm-may" and "maing-uh."

One of the first manga I ever read was Fushigi Yuugi and I still have trouble saying that title right from having always said it wrong. I say "fuh-shoo-ghee yoo-ghee" every time. I can't think of any specific characters whose names I had wrong, but I know there were a few.

Cirno. Apparently that is as 'kerno', but that's not my problem; I'm not even convinced that the romanisation was done right — I've seen nothing to suggest that it shouldn't be Chiruno.
The original writing is チルノ, 'chiruno'; this strikes me personally as 'Chiluno' (ル often being used to denote L, although ル゜ might be proper) ergo 'Chillno', as a pun on English 'chill' and Japanese 'no' that would render the name to mean 'of [the] cold' — which is what Cirno is as an ice fairy. My personal take on the name, but I would cede to the word of ZUN if he has said anything of it.

I pronounce Akira inconsistently. If I'm referring to the movie Akira, I say "Uh-keer-uh." If I'm referring to the character Akira from the movie Akira, I say "Ah-keer-ah." It makes no sense.

Vendak said:

I pronounced Totoro as Tot-oar-oh for years because I'd never actually seen it. :( Then I finally watched it and realised I'd been saying it wrong the whole time.

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I WAS GOING TO POST THIS ONE. This was a really big one for me. :3

This is a really big one for me. I also used to mispronounce the name Aika. I used to say Ah-ee-ka, and emphasize the ee, which is just completely off haha.

I constantly have debates about the stressing of certain syllables in Susano-o. I say "Soo-sah-NO-oh" whereas my boyfriend says "Soo-SAH-no-oh". I've also read Fushigi Yuugi and constantly refer to it as Fushugi Yuugi (it's easier to remember that way). Thankfully I've gotten out of thinking Kyou was pronounced "Kie-yoo" and Shigure "Shi-goo-ree".

Well, I still pronounce Totoro as To-ta-ro, which gets kind of annoying when I'm trying to talk about it with someone. Then, I used to say You-shi instead of Yoshi (from the Mario series).
But since I've started to learn Japanese, my level of mispronunciations have gone down ^.^

Also, "Ginnosuke" (Gin-no-su-kei) is one of the names I can say perfectly (well, that's how it's pronounced in the Japanese version anyway), but in the actual dubbed version of "Tokyo Underground" it's pronounced "Jen-no-su-kei" which really ticks me off. >.<

Scarf said:

I used to say the words anime and manga as "ann-imm-may" and "maing-uh."

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I still say anime that way and have no problem with it since it was originally a concatenation of "animation" before becoming its own thing... and for some reason it always just sounds really awkward when people pronounce anime the Japanese way when talking about it in English. I figure it's kind of enough of an English word now anyway. u_u;