Talk:My Little Pony Friendship is Magic/International edits/@comment-5288784-20140822080350

A while ago it occurred to me, why in Polish version Tirek's name might be changed to Terik. It's not fully confirmed yet, but based on the attached photo and what I'm about to write, quite probable.

You see: Polish has a rich declension system. In English, there are three grammatical cases only used in personal pronouns (example: he, his, him) and for the other nouns you can create genitive by adding 's. Polish has seven grammatical cases (though probably never seven different ones – some are identical in a given word) and this also includes names. Yes, we decline names in seven grammatical cases! For example:

Nom: Celestia Gen: Celestii Dat: Celestii Acc: Celestię Ins: Celestią Loc: Celestii Voc: Celestio Here, genitive, dative, and locative were identical. Virtually, every female name ending with "a" (so none of the main cast) and every male name can and should be declined. So, obviously, Tirek's name should be declined. There is a problem, however. Normally, male names ending with "-ek", like "Jacek" or "Marek" drops "e" in cases other than nominative. So, by this logic, "Tirek" also should… except that it sound silly (at least to me) to drop "e". Why it sounds silly? Because male names ending with "ek" are often (not always) diminutives of full names. On Polish wiki, general consensus is therefore not to drop "e", although I've seen people who does that and people who are not sure how it is really declined. So, here's declension of "Tirek" with dropped "e" and without dropped "e".

Nom: Tirek Gen: Tirka/Tireka Dat: Tirka/Tireka Acc: Tirkowi/Tirekowi Ins: Tirkiem/Tirekiem Loc: Tirku/Tireku Voc: Tirku/Tireku

This is the dilemma Polish dubbers would have to solve. One way would be to construct dialogue in such way, as to avoid mentioning Tirek's name in cases other than nominative. This would be quite difficult, and this is obviously not what they did (in the attached photo, even if we treat "Terik" as typo, clearly instrumental case have been already used). Most obvious way would be choosing one of these declension variants, and either making his name sound silly, or being questioned by the grammar nazis (I don't really know who would be right here, to be honest). So what they could do about the matter? Rename him! This is not invasive renaming though, just switching positions of two vowels, and "Terik" still sounds equally threatening. And this is brilliant idea, because there is only one way to decline this, and it never sounds silly!

Nom: Terik Gen: Terika Dat: Terika Acc: Terikowi Ins: Terikiem Loc: Teriku Voc: Teriku

So here it is: my theory about the reasoning behind possible name change of "Tirek" to "Terik" in Polish.