Final Fantasy 7: Why Was Aerith Called Aeris

Summary

• Aerith Gainsborough is a powerful, iconic character with unique abilities only seen in the Final Fantasy 7 series.
• The name Aerith is the correct one, with Aeris being an early mistranslation for Western audiences.
• Aerith's backstory also includes the assumed name "Ronna" for added protection, revealed in the series novel.

Back when Final Fantasy 7 was first released on the original PlayStation back in 1997, fans were introduced to a huge cast of characters, each one with a sprawling backstory and tons of personality. One tragic character has been cemented in gaming culture since players first had to watch her fall at the hands of Sephiroth, Aerith.

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For many though, they might better recognize her under a different name, Aeris, especially if they played the original game. The flower seller plays a hugely influential role in the course of the greater Final Fantasy 7 story, having been involved with all sorts of events across multiple games. But why is there this discrepancy with Aerith’s name?

Who Is Aerith Gainsborough?

Aerith Gainsborough is a powerful magical caster, an ever-flowing font of positivity, and the last member of an ancient race with strange supernatural abilities. Much of her life has been marked by either running from agents of the evil Shinra organization or hiding from other evil agents. Despite all her hard work at not being found, she seems to frequently find herself embroiled in schemes and evil corporate plots.

When players first meet her, she’s selling flowers on the streets of Midgar, with Cloud running into her after the bombing of Mako Reactor 1. She meets the young eco-terrorist again a short while later after Cloud falls from Mako Reactor 5, in the ruins of a church where he lay in a small flower bed.

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Even before that though, Aerith had run into another prominent Final Fantasy 7 character, Zach Fair. During the events of Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core, she meets Zach in a very similar way, after he falls into the ruined church from Mako Reactor 5. He is the one who suggests to Aerith that she could start selling flowers as a way to make some extra money.

As a Cetra, Aerith has many abilities that are unique to her in the series. Among them is her almost supernatural ability to sense and understand the world around her, especially when life has been lost. This ability to sense life is shown most prominently when she feels the loss of Zach, even after they haven’t seen each other in more than four years.

Aerith can also communicate with the planet in a variety of ways. She seems to be able to communicate with plants like her flowers, though it isn’t like a conventional conversation. She can also feel the planet’s will and communicate with it.

So, Why The Two Names?

As far as the game is concerned, Aerith has only one name and has always only had one name, and that’s Aerith. The confusion comes from a translation error that occurred when bringing the original Final Fantasy 7 game to western audiences.

The original name change occurred when Sony Computer Entertainment America transliterated the name from Japanese to English. See, transliteration is not the same as translating something, instead it's bringing the characters of a word from one language to another using the closest corresponding characters of another. So Aerith’s name was transliterated to Aeris.

Since the katakana writing system writes Aeriths’ name as エアリス, "e-a-ri-su", an issue arises as the Japanese language does not have a “th” sound in the same way that the English language does. To substitute this, the character ス, “su” is used as the best fit.

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This error continued up until the release of the original Kingdom Hearts game, which caused plenty of confusion for English-speaking fans despite being the most accurate depiction of her name. Interestingly, in Japanese publications that used the Latin-text version of her name correctly called her Aerith in other Final Fantasy 7 related material.

Another interesting note that confirms that Aerith was always the proper name for the character is that in the code for Final Fantasy 7, she is referred to as Aerith, in the same way that Cloud is referred to as “Ex-Soldier” before the game gives you a chance to rename him.

A rather confusing choice by Square Enix has been the continued use of Aeris in certain rereleases of the original game, including in the most recent Nintendo Switch port of the game.

Admittedly, Aerith Has A Third Name

After Aerith had been adopted by Elmyra Gainsborough, she needed to adopt an assumed name to keep her safe from forces who were trying to track her down. During this time, she went under the name of Ronna. They take inspiration for the name from the daughter of one of Elmyra’s husband’s coworkers, who advise the family to have Aerith hide her true name from the world. This is only revealed in the Final Fantasy VII Remake Trace of Two Pasts novel that came out in 2023, so don’t fret if you don’t remember the name from the original release of the game or even the Remake.

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