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Comment by nwh | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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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).

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