if we find some evidence that makes "Bullet" as likely, I'll change to green again.
But the only thing that's going to change Barrett in the translation is word from the writers.
Well, to be clear, I was not suggesting actually changing his name, just to make some research on the matter I pointed to:
"His name is supposed to be Bullet and they explicitly changed it for the US release." coming from that official japanese material.
And I don't think the director, writer, or character designer are going to talk about it because there's no reason to do so unless someone foreign asks them.
Sometimes it just comes down to what is more likely and making an educated guess.
The policy on a conflict, where both have equal weight, is to stick with the original. It's what I had to do with "Seto", even though "Seth / Set" is as likely... or maybe even more so.
Well, actually I think Seto is OK, if you consider the theme around that race's names, examples: Seto, Nanaki, Dine... (yeah, not many possible examples, lol) but there's no way to know.
On the assumption that it isn't "Bullet", we've gone with Barrett - it's how the real-world name is usually spelt, and might be a reference to the firearms company, but I'm ok with any variation on that, I don't think it's very important, especially considering it's a PC name that can be changed by the player. Something like "Bullet" however would be a change worth looking into if there were more evidence to support it.
Actually that's a good assumption if you haven't seen what I mentioned, though.
Anyway, what if it was intended to be "Bullet" and then after the US release they scrapped that idea?
Well, I hope we can find a scan from that book to find what I was talking about.
Ultimania largely uses English canon names, even when blatantly incorrect (like Mideel).
Yeah, I think at that time (2005, IIRC) was when they began using the bad US release names.
Anyway, isn't Earith more "accurate", too, including that supposed reference to Earth?
Although earth is "アース" in japanese, so maybe it was English->Japanese->English as usual.
I can imagine what some people would say about this, considering their hate to Aerith instead of Aeris too... lol.
This "names origins" theme is actually interesting to me, aside of the use for translation/localization.