Although the story that George Lucas named Indiana Jones after his dog (and used the dog as sorta the basis of the character Chewbacca) is well-known, I’ve long suspected that the science fiction-savvy Lucas was inspired to use that name by the memory of Catherine L. Moore’s character Northwest Smith.
Smith was a science fiction character, and it would’ve made more sense to use the name for, say, Han Solo, but maybe not – Lucas was staying away from names that could be traced back to Earth cultures, and “Smith” would have stood out among all the alien names.
The character Margo in the TV series The Magicians was Janet in the books. But the book and TV series also has main character Julia and side characters Josh and Jane, so it was a fairly obvious “wrong” to right.
And now I remember that Banner’s middle name in the comics is Bruce, too. In the comics, he was Robert Bruce Banner, and on the TV show he was David Bruce Banner.
In the 2016 film adaptation of the children’s book ‘Swallows and Amazons’* they changed Titty Walker’s name to Tatty.
Cowards.
*I remember a classmate when I was about 8 solemnly informing me that the Swallows and Amazons series, featuring Titty, Dick and a brief appearance by a housemaid named Fanny was ‘Porn’.
While not quite what the OP had in mind but I’ve always felt that Harvey Korman’s character in History of the World: Part I is spelled wrong. The joke would work much better as “de Monee” rather than “de Monet”.
I think that they made “Bruce” a middle name only to square the comics with the TV show. My recollection from the pre-TV days is that his name was simply “Bruce Banner.”
Here’s what the Wikipedia entry on “Hulk” has to say:
So it was originally “Bruce Banner”, but he became “Robert Bruce Banner” to retcon in somebody’s error in calling him “Bob” (Kinda like “John Hamish Watson”)
In the book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH the main character is a mouse called Mrs. Frisby. In the movie The Secret of NIMH the main character is a mouse called Mrs. Brisby. The “Mrs. Frisby” name in the novel was changed to “Mrs. Brisby” during production due to trademark concerns with Frisbee discs.
Also in the show “The Greatest American Hero” the main character was originally called Ralph Hinkley. It was changed to Ralph Hanley after President Reagan was shot by John Hinckley Jr.
There is a well-written, fun kidlit SF novel called The True Meaning of Smekday. It was made into a movie called Home by gutting 99% of the novel and replacing it with generic dreck. One of the vast number of changes was to change the name of the main alien character from JLo to Oh.
Anime localizations used to be infamous for replacing Japanese names with English ones. Perhaps the weirdest case I’ve seen was when Cardcaptor Sakura was brought to North America as Cardcaptors. The title character kept her Japanese first name, and two Chinese kept their names as well, but the rest of the cast (including Sakura’s family) were given English names.
You have a low bar for weird. In the American version of Journey to the West (renamed Alakazam the Great) the character Zhu Baije became (wait for it…) Sir Quigley Broken Bottom!
The name change only lasted the remainder of the first season. By the second season, Ralph’s last name was changed back to Hinkley, although he was often referred to as “Mr. H.”
