So... do our kaiju pals all have OFFICIAL names?

[The Top Crusader]

As far as Angilas/Angurus/Annzilla (thanks to that great book my Ian Thorne!), Minilla/Minya, King Caesar/King Seezar, etc.

I've always wanted to properly type and pronounce these names but never know what is going on. >_>

I assume Spiega/Kumonga and Gimantis/Kamacuras was just a dub thing, at least.

[Jorzilla]

Over the last 10+ years I've been MZ, I've heard KPA make reference to the International Names which fall under what you would see on the back of merchandising. I'm not sure where you would find an official list, however.

[jellydonut25]

There ARE official names, though some fans definitely choose to ignore them:

Anguirus is the official name (MANY fans say Angilas)
Kumonga
Kamacuras
Destoroyah (due to trademark issues if attempting to use Destroyer)

Really not sure about many others...

[klen7]

I use them all interchangeably depending on the thread or conversation, but I almost always go with Destoroyah

[Psycho Soldier]

I'm certain that Minilla and King Caesar are also official spellings.

[tbeasley]

I'm pretty sure Toho Kingdom tries to go with the official names -
http://www.tohokingdom.com/monster_bios.htm

I don't know if it's complete, but this is interesting -
http://www.tohokingdom.com/articles/art_names.htm

[Zack Metoyer]

Tyler is right, Snorkel Kingdom has used the official copyrighted names for many, many years. These are the standardized names that appear on merchandise in English speaking territories. For monsters or other characters that are not copyrighted, Toho has supplied them with their preferred spellings.

[The Top Crusader]

That's for useful... thanks for the info, guys!

[kpa]

[eabaker]

Well, Angilas/Anguirus is one that raises the question, "What the Hell do Toho's marketing people think the letter 'u' is for?!" Its presence in their standardized romanizations of "Anguirus," "Moguera" and "Megaguirus" is baffling to me. I can't imagine that they expect people to go around saying "Mo-gwe-ra."

[DannyBeane]

[Benjamin Haines]

[kpa]

[H-Man]

I think the dubbing scripts given to the international dubbers were probably full of inconsistencies. It's not surprising that they often differ from the Japanese versions as I'm sure that whole sections of the movies had to be rewritten out of necessity.

For example, Rodan was called "Radon" in the international version of GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA II, however, the monster is "Rodan" in Toho's international end credits. Likewise, Destoroyah is called "Destroyer" in the English dub although the main title and end credits use Toho's preferred name. I think this suggests that the subtitles or script that the dubbers had to work with was roughly translated from Japanese. The monster names are probably directly translated from Japanese and not corrected to reflect Toho's official English names.

My favorite example of Toho's monster name inconsistency: the villain in REBIRTH OF MOTHRA 2 is called "Dagarla" in the English dub as well as the end credits. The movie came out in 1997 and was probably dubbed in early 1998. By the time ROM2 was released on video in the States in 2000, Toho had switched to "Dagahra".

[jellydonut25]

I thought the U in MOGUERA stood for "Underground"

[Baltan II]

[KaijuZoo]