A Linguistics Lesson: Dr. Weil (Mega Man Zero)

Now for something slightly educational and mildly pointless!

This is Dr. Weil, the primary antagonist of Mega Man Zero. Apparently there's a little bit of confusion caused by his name, how it's pronounced, and who it could possibly connect him to, so I thought I'd dedicate a little bit of time out of my day to elaborate on this.

Some people out there pronounce the name "wile," and say that this points to him being Dr. Wily, the antagonist of the original Mega Man series. I can't say I buy that. For one thing, Dr. Wily, while a card-carrying villain of the utmost degree, does have scruples and is quite capable of acts of kindness and gratitude. For instance, at the conclusion of Mega Man 10, after being taken to the hospital for sickness by Mega Man, leaves enough Roboenza medicine in his hospital bed to completely remove all traces of the virus from the world.

Weil, on the other hand, is easy to see as the foulest, most evil character in the setting, with no redeeming qualities or standards whatsoever.

In addition, his name isn't even pronounced like that.

Let's take a look at the original kana: バイル . An accurate phonetic translation of this would be "Bairu." Since people typically don't name characters after pre-puke, and the Japanese syllabary doesn't have any actual "V" sound, it's obvious that his name is supposed to be Vile.

But... don't we already have a Vile in Mega Man?

Yes, we do... in America. See, the Mega Man X villain that we know as Vile actually had a different name across the pond. His original Japanese name was VAVA. Now, that name sounds rather silly, and there's the fact that Capcom of America likely only saw the kana as "BABA." Given who Vile is visually based on, it's a safe bet that they didn't want to get in legal trouble with Lucasfilms. Thus, they changed his name to something more threatening, if about as subtle as a shotgun blast.

So imagine their confusion when Capcom of Japan popped out a character who actually WAS named Vile... which leads me to my next bit.

Let's take a look at the German language. You know how a stereotypical German accent replaces "w" with "v" sounds? There's a reason for this: In the German language, that IS the "w" sound.

Capcom of America decided to alter JP!Vile's name in such a way that it now resembled an actual name, yet at the same time did not change the pronunciation or the threatening overtones. Thus, Dr. Weil is still pronounced the same as it is in the Land of the Rising Sun, "Doctor Vile."

Moral of the story: Not every dub name change is as bad as the MegaMan Battle Network anime.