In the Showtime series “The Tudors” they basically used the life story (with some drastic changes) of Henry VIII’s younger sister Mary but called her Margaret (name of Henry’s older sister) apparently because they felt people would get confused with all the Marys (Henry and Catherine of Aragon’s daughter Mary, Mary Boleyn-sister of Anne and Henry’s one time mistress).The real Margaret’s life got left out.
“I, Claudius” used nicknames for people such as “Castor” for the Emperor Tiberius’s son Drusus Julius Caesar. Also for various women such as Caligula’s sisters since ancient Romans weren’t big on giving women names, although it was changing.
We had a thread once about a subset of this: when a movie title is simplified when translating for foreign audiences. This annoys me, because it implies “[non-English]-speakers are too dumb to appreciate subtlety.” The classic example for me is Jaws, in Spanish merely Tiburón (“Shark”).
In the actual Operation Chastise mission known as “The Dambusters” by it’s subsequent works, the name of the squadrons morale dog was called “Nigger” since it was a black dog. At the time in 1940’s England the word didn’t have nearly the racist connotations as it did in the US and the dog stayed named this for both the 1951 book and the 1955 British movie. However subsequent releases since the 1990’s either in editing the original book/movie or with the threat of a potential remake the dog’s name was changed to either Blackie or Digger to better suit modern audiences.
Even in the early comics, Stan Lee slipped up and started calling him Bob Banner for a while leading to his full canonical name being made Robert Bruce Banner.
The Greatest American Hero, Ralph Hinkley became Ralph Hanley for a while when a nut sack named Hinkley shot the President.
Similarly WWE recently renamed Apollo Crews to just Apollo because of that a-hole named Cruz in Florida.
Sounds similar to young Robert of the Aerie in Song of Ice and Fire being changed to “robin” for HBO’s Game of Thrones, since there were already a lot of roberts running around, guess popular names don’t exist in TV/Movie land.
Similarly, the hero of Philip K. Dick’s short story We Can Remember it for you Wholesale was named Quayle. But we had a Veep by that name when they filmed it as Total Recall, so they changed the name of Arnold Schwarzeneggar’s character to Quaid.
And even though Quayle was long out of office when they remade the film in 2012, they still kept the name Quaid for the lead.
It’s not exactly what I had in mind in the OP – this isn’t a name made simpler for the movie, just changed for historical reasons, but it’s relevant to TBG’s post
King Richard and the Crusaders (1954) - “The Castelaine Knights from the movie are an invented group that plays the villain. They are supposed to be playing the part of the ‘Knights Templar.’ There are two theories as to why these characters were changed from Knights Templar to Castelaines. The first is because of Production Code that prevents negative representation of clergy in film. The second is because the producers wanted to avoid upsetting the Masonic Knights Templar, a group that many Hollywood figures were members of. It is unclear which theory, if either, is that actual reason for changing the name.” - from IMDB
In the first three AIP beach party movies, Jody McCrea plays a character called “Deadhead.” For the last two flicks in the series released in 1965, his character is called “Bonehead.” Some band called The Grateful Dead with followers known as “deadheads” made their debut in 1965, but I am not sure that had anything to do with the name change.
In the novel Build my Gallows High (1946) by Daniel Mainwaring (writing as Geoffrey Homes), the femme fatale has the decidedly unalluring name of Mumsie McGonigle. Filmed in 1947 as* Out of the Past* with a script primarily written by the author, this silly name was changed to Kathie Moffat.
The role played by Joseph Cotten in The Third Man (1949) was originally named Rollo Martins. Allegedly, Cotten refused to play a character named Rollo, so it was changed to Holly.
In the James Bond novel Dr. No, the shell-collecting beauty Bond encounters on the island goes by ‘Honeychile.’ In the movie, her name is shortened to ‘Honey.’
An opposite case of the OP’s quest, in a title: “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” was changed to the less mundane “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”
Another case of changing for pronounceability – In Harry Bates’ short story Farewell to the Master the name of Klaatu’s robot is Gnut, presumably without a silent “G”. * In the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still that they adapted from it, the robot is pretty famously named Gort.
*Of course it’s pronounced, and not a silent “G”. I mean, imagine the discussion they’d have otherwise:
Earth Guy: So his name’s NUT, then?
Klaatu: No, it’s GNUT. The “G” is silent.
Earth Guy: They have the letter “G” on your planet?
This change was apparently made, at least in part, because producer David Wolper had convinced the Quaker Oats Company to introduce Wonka candy bars, and act as financial backers for the film. In exchange for their backing, the title was changed to explicitly reference Wonka, for promotional purposes.
I shouldn’t be surprised that there’s a TV Tropes page devoted to this.
A lot of these changes have already been named, and a lot of them listed on the page aren’t made to make them “simpler” (although some definitely are).
One I’m surprised that I missed was the 1931 film Frankenstein, where they switched the first names of Victor Frankenstein Henry Clerval*, I suspect because they thought Americans would relate more easily to a “henry” than to a “Victor”.
*Actually, they changed his last name, too, from “Clerval” to “Moritz”. Maybe they wanted to give the sense that this was all taking place in Germany, and “Clerval” was too French-sounding. Which would have been appropriate if they kept the setting in Switzerland.
Hannibal Lecter actually washed the liver and beans down with (the far better suited) Amarone, not Chianti.
It was imagined that no one would have heard of Amarone (“So…is that like amaretto then, or what? Who drinks amaretto with liver?!”), so a more common wine was used for the movie.
