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Comment by callum85 | Hacker News Reader

Slightly off topic, but I've always wondered... Is there any particular reason why they changed his name for the US editions? Is there something about "Wally" that sounds weird to Americans?

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I don't believe (note: no statistics were examined in the making of this answer) "Waldo" is a particularly American name. "Wally" has at least some traction, if not particularly recently.

I've always been told that it's dumbing down, usually the line is "American children wouldn't understand it". I suppose it's the same as the Harry Potter books, "Philosopher" changed to "Sorcerer" in the title. It's very prevalent to change "foreign" names to Americanised ones.

Perhaps philosopher has a different connotation in UK English. Sorcerer just seems more appropriate in a book about magic.

The Philosofer's Stone[1] is a commonly used mythological item in fiction.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher's_stone

The term "Philosopher's stone" is from medieval european alchemical lore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher's_stone

I don't know if they imagined british kids all knowing about that, but I can assure you the term would be just as fantastical to them as to americans.

Interesting. Having never looked into the history of alchemy, I would never have associated philosophers with alchemy. Sorcerer just makes more sense (to me).

Except his name is changed in almost every country, so it's not "dumbing down":

Germany - Walter

Norway - Willy

France - Charlie

Denmark - Holger

Israel - Effi

Source: http://mentalfloss.com/article/22414/wheres-waldo-and-whos-w...

I'm not sure if that applies in this case... There's nothing to 'understand' about the name Wally or Waldo. They're both just random, invented names, AFAICT.

"Wally" would be a shortening of "Wallace", both are quite old names.

Or "Walter", which seems more common in the U.S.

(This comment brought to you by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Statistics.)

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