When I first read the article "What's new in episode 5?", the English nation names of Cuento, Epyk and Ys Artia were somehow familiar. But Weyland? By elimination, it's clear that the name is for the northern nation, but that didn't match ist JP name.

The original name in Japanese is "ヴェルン", romanized as ve-ru-n. Not sure how this will be spelled in English (Verun? Vern?), but Weyland is clearly not a choice to represent the Japanese sound of this name. Why Verun had to be changed?

To make it sure, I'm not criticizing the change. I'm totally fine about changing names in English translation, if they think that's necessary. I just want to know the reason.

Note: I said I'm fine about changing names in English, but I remembered one exception. Falspawn, I never forgive you...

That leads me to ask, what are the literary derivations for Verun and Weyland (and to a lesser degree Es-Ars)?

Cuento is obviously just the Spanish word for a tale, Epyk is derived from epic poetry, and Ys Artia might be related to the Cold War-era publisher, Artia, that mostly dealt with children's stories or maybe even to Arthurian myth.

If I had to make some sort of guess. They chose to go with Weyland as it sounds like "Wasteland". Given how barren and dead Verun is, it'd be pretty fitting all things considered.

This is definitely a case of localization rather than any sort of censorship, since as far as I've read, Verun has absolutely no meaning outside of it being a name, so there wouldn't be anything to get offended about anyway.

It's like how the Digimon Tailmon is referred to as Gatomon outside of japan, sometimes it's just about making something sound more interesting for a different audience.

For context of timing, most if not all voicework for Episodes 1-5 and part of episode 6 (Verified via datamining) was completed before the PC release, possibly even as early as before the Xbox release. Given the current world situation it would be very hard to call people back in for translation fixes to re-record lines. We've seen some examples of this in the past where character lines didn't match up with the on screen text such as the between phase 1-2 line from Xiera during the Falz Mother fight. Doing that for an entire episode would just look unprofessional. Basically I'm saying there's a chance they may have been stuck with what they had.

Thank you all for responses! At least now I know that the reason for the change is rather a mystery, I'm quite content with that.

@Thedovahmon Honestly, I agree that Weyland sounds better than Verun for the northern empire

A bit off from the topic, while I was searching for some generic info about Buster Quests, I noticed that on JP server, they are showing the full nation name including the political system. Looks like the formal English name of Verun within the JP serever is The Verunian Empire.

https://www.google.com/search?q=バスタークエスト+ヴェルン&source=lnms&tbm=isch

@Thedovahmon said in Why is a name "Verun" problematic?:

It's like how the Digimon Tailmon is referred to as Gatomon outside of japan, sometimes it's just about making something sound more interesting for a different audience.

I can't honestly say Gatomon is really that more interesting. It's just "cat" in Spanish. Maybe I'm baised as a Southern Californian who's far too familiar with the language? Kotturmon would be way cooler IMO. Dead languages are almost always strangely appealing to us westerners (even if it's technically also Sweedish) (granted the Latin translation wasn't nearly as cool).

Also I don't see how Verun is less interesting than Weyland either.

@AndrlCh said in Why is a name "Verun" problematic?:

That leads me to ask, what are the literary derivations for Verun and Weyland (and to a lesser degree Es-Ars)?

Verun most likely comes from Verundo, the JP way of saying Volundr, which in english can also be Wayland/Weyland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_the_Smith this might answer that question.

The NA localization team truly is amazing. Missing some obvious stuff at some places, yet successfully working some somewhat obscure stuff in others.

As a side note, that's hella interesting.

@Kos said in Why is a name "Verun" problematic?:

Verun most likely comes from Verundo, the JP way of saying Volundr, which in english can also be Wayland/Weyland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_the_Smith this might answer that question.

Oh, this is the most convincing link between Verun and Weyland.