The author's intent is part of what makes it arbitrary though, since the entire process is. For actual words, you can course-correct after wading through the transliteration waters, since words have meaning. For names however, pretty much anything goes. It is what they want it to be, conventions or origins be damned. We know they started with the English word Earth, and somehow ended up with what we got. This is the argument I'd use against the Bullet name above.
I'm not sure that you understand the meaning of "arbitrary", lol. This isn't someone's whim or something without reason; it's a thought-out choice that is reflected in the game's themes and her limit breaks.
As for the inconsistency, we have three spellings of her name, two of which are used in the games, merchandising and soundtracks. It's one thing to not bother to fix your ports (though I think this was a mistake), but they were still releasing new Aeris merch in 2011 with that music box.
The gold one? That's not from 2011; that's from further back, at least 2009 if not before that. It's also not put out by Square or Square-Enix; it's a third-party company. Again, though, the argument here isn't solely "Japanese merch has her name on it with the -th"; that's only part of it.
So let's break this down a little further.
-The majority of Japanese merchandise has called her "Aerith" from the beginning.
-Every officially-published Square/Square-Enix material in Japan, from manuals to guidebooks, have referred to her as "Aerith".
-The localizations of VII and Tactics were done by the same man; VII's suffered from him having almost no time, no context, and no resources to double-check intent or overall editing, while Tactics had a little more help from an external company but suffered from the same lack of context and resources.
-Japan can sometimes be iffy with spellings, though; they've also spelled "Sephiroth" as "Sephiros" (which is a straight-up error), amongst other issues in general. Because of that, if we set aside merchandise and written work....
-The developers have stated it was a straight-up transliteration of "Earth".
-A significant portion Aerith's character arc centers around learning to speak with the Planet.
-All of her limit breaks deal with the earth and nature.
-Every official Square-Enix release, from guidebooks to games, after the initial VII and Tactics + related merch has dictated the name is Aerith.
This is not arbitrary. This is intent.
Also true:
-People who shouted down anyone who used "Aeris" during the post-VII, pre-KH time period were worthy of eyerolls.
-People who insult you for simply referring to her as "Aeris" are ridiculous.
-You can continue to use "Aeris" when you speak about her.
-You can prefer "Aeris" to "Aerith".
-You can think they should have kept her name "Aeris".
-You can think they should have changed the name in ports if their intent was "Aerith".
-Changes to straight-up ports [VII, Stardew Valley, Telltale's Walking Dead] are rare and usually solely related to system differences and minor tweaks; changes to emulated ports [VIII on PSP/Vita/PS3, mostly anything under the "Playstation Classics" banner] are basically non-existent due to them being, well, emulated; remasters and such [VI Advance; Metal Gear Solid HD, etc.] are a different story, but VII's subsequent releases are not remasters.
What is striking me as weird here is that you're not simply expressing a preference for "Aeris"; you're ignoring the majority of information, authorial intent, and so on all for the sake of claiming that the use of "Aerith" is inconsistent and an arbitrary decision.
This differs from "Barett" versus "Barrett" versus "Barret" in that the pronunciation is the same for each spelling; it stems from "bullet"'s transliteration according to one of the official guidebooks, but "based on" is not the same as "is the transliteration itself", not to mention that the Ultimania, original manual, and other official Square sources all use variations on "Barret" but not "Bullet".
The only way they're consistent is when we dismiss all instances they weren't, which is probably a bit too charitable of a read of this mess.
Not quite. If we refer solely to materials published by Square/Square-Enix (taking away third-party merchandise, unofficial publications, and so on), we find a few things:
-"Aeris" in Western Final Fantasy VII as we see in the normal course of gameplay + all subsequent ports
-"Aeris" in Western Final Fantasy Tactics PS1
-"Aerith" in JPN VII manual
-"Aerith" in the Ultimania (JPN)
-"Aerith" in the Kaitai Shinsho (JPN)
-"Aerith" in Western Kingdom Hearts
-"Aerith" in Western Kingdom Hearts II
-"Aerith" in Western Advent Children
-"Aerith" in Western Crisis Core (JPN manual only uses katakana)
-"Aerith" in the 10th Anniversary Ultimania (JPN)
She's been "Aerith" more often than she's been Aeris". It's been, for the vast majority of actual official internal releases, consistent.
I wonder how much this situation could have been alleviated if they'd have fixed Aerith's name in many the ports. With every re-release, they just introduced new people to this mess.
They definitely could have fixed the mess, but to be fair, the only things they actually changed between versions are the button prompts. Everything else is unchanged from the 2012 PC release, which only had a few tweaks here and there compared to the 1998 PC release. A couple of item names were changed, but most typos, mistranslations, and the like were kept. I'd wager that the change in item names was due to it being a lot easier in coding than having to go through every single mention of, say, "Aeris" in the code and change it.
