There are often numerous acceptable ways to render English words in katakana, and which way you choose can send all kinds of messages. I'm involved in a music event called "Switched On" with a bunch of Japanese people and when we were trying to work out the katakana, they spent ages debating the best way. The most accurate for pronunciation is something like スイッチュドン but スイッチド・オン looks better on paper and they felt it had a sort of cheesy, more retro feel that they liked.

And yeah, a lot of Japanese people go through life with pretty odd kanji/kana match-ups. My friend Futoshi's name has a kanji that's usually read as "Dai", and my wife Kaname narrowly avoided getting the furigana "Kamome" for the kanji 要, which would have really been horrible.

I agree that these shows shouldn't be made with Westerners in mind — that's fine, and even if Simon is pronounced a variety of ways in other Western languages, when the series is dubbed in English, the spelling of "Simon" implies a pronunciation of "sai-mon." But yes, since it's a fantasy character and no nationality is ever specified or implied, I guess it's presumptuous to say that it should be pronounced "sai-mon."

Go me for forgetting the name Hikaru. Regardless, I guess you're right. Mangaka do love to play around their puns, whether it's in character names or anything else. I'm just kind of iffy on the general practice of assigning kanji to non-Japanese words, especially when there already exists kanji for word's meaning. (Then again, I guess it isn't all that different from English's rampant adoptions of words from other languages; we just don't have a complex kanji system.)

As for Simon and the rest – thing is, these shows are not made for an English-speaking, western audience. They're not made with foreign languages in mind, period (and I don't see why they should be, just because foreigners watch the shows as well). The names may look like they're English/German/etc. but they not necessarily are English/German/etc. It may be confusing for English speakers who take it granted that if it's written as "Simon" then it's pronounced as "sai-mon" but that's just a mostly baseless assumption, really. (By the way, "Simon" is pronounced as "si-mon" in French, "zi-mon" in German and "shi-mon" in Hungarian, my first language. No default pronunciation. How do you know it was meant to be pronounced as "sai-mon"?)

When the writers do find it important that the names are English/German/etc. and do want then they usually make an effort to romanize and pronounce them correctly within the confines of their language, of course. But most of the time they don't because it's just not important and they don't tihnk of these names as English (or German or whatever). I mean, really, look at Gundam Seed – there are names like Cagalli Yula Athha, Mu La Flaga and Murrue Ramius, what does it matter that a name is spelled Stellat instead of the "correct" (but to whom?) Stella? :D

By the way, as for Light – he's named 月 because 夜神月 is cool and goes well with his surname (his that means "god of the night"), plus it has all sorts of ambiguous connotations and implications especially since the reading is "light." On the other hand, 光 (which could be read as "hikaru," mind you, which is a male name) is not a cool name for an antihero because it has positive connotations, no contrasts, no ambiguity, nothing.

The way Japanese works, it's easy to play with names, meanings and implications and mangaka love to exploit this. Of course such names would never ever fly IRL, but this is manga, and in manga world people can have all sorts of weird names and nobody bats an eyelash. (Look at Ichigo of Bleach. Cool kanji, yes, but ouch. Of course is's meant to be a funny pun, but still.) And Light probably just uses furigana. It's not unusual, even normal Japanese names can be difficult to figure out.

For Simon and Viral, yes, it's fantasy, but that doesn't mean that the names aren't based in English — most Japanese fantasy names seem to be based in either English, French or German, and they attempt to pronounce them as such. Should translators indulge in the fact that the Japanese just can't pronounce them?

As far as spelling goes, I completely agree with you for all words involving non-Japanese names or Japanese-conceived Western/fantasy names with an official Roman spelling that's appeared in magazines and the ilk. For example, Stellar from Gundam SEED Destiny might sound nicer translated as "Stella," an actual Western name, but that doesn't erase all of the official Japanese publications that have already romanized it as "Stellar."

For a character like Horo/Holo, who's name only ever appears in katakana, the debate is more legitimate, in my opinion.

Fan-preferred spellings are influenced by lots of things that may very well be flawed – just look at "Haine" which is supposed to be "Heine" as it's a German name, yet some fans threw a fit when VIZ dared to use the correct spelling (that even the mangaka uses). Or there's the romanization of "rakurima" in Noein – the correct romanization should be "lacrima" ("tear" in Latin), yet fansubs romanized it as La'Cryma which is a JRock band La'Cryma Christi. (This was also used in the official translation as well which is simply ridiculous.) So no, fan-preferred spellings are not always correct.

Also, what Authoritaters said.

Ever tried pronouncing Kentucky Fried Chicken in Japanese?

"kentaki-horaido-chii-kin".

XD