Lately, I have been doing some research and am finding that the whole cast of Star Wars had different names for French people in the 1970's. Some of them wonderfully glorious and mystifying.
Chewbacca is called "Chico" for millions of French people. His full name is Chiquetaba. I had no idea Chewbacca was Chicano. He sounds like he could have a guest spot on Miami Vice.
C3PO is Z6PO which sounds just like a strong case of dyslexia. Why all mechanical things have to be reversed in French, I'll never know. I cite the prime example of my other favorite non star wars reversal of words: "talkie walkie".
And the third sampling is perhaps my favorite if only that it makes Harrison Ford sound more Scandinavian and perhaps a little less masculine. Like a character from a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale. Ladies, I give you Yan Solo in the place of Han Solo.
And last but certainly not least, there is Dark Vador. Yes, that's right. Dark, not Darth. I guess this is the classic case of mishearing a word that anyone in his right mind would naturally assume is the English word dark. After all, this guy looks pretty dark. But the name is actually a George Lucas centric word that just sounds like "dark" but is not actually "dark". Actually, this is the only one that I can kind of understand why there is the change of character name. But still, I love how in most of these cases, the change of character name has been made to replace one English sounding name to another English sounding name that, I suppose, is easier on the French ear.
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