That doesn't quite hold in some cases. I was refering to pointless name changes - when dubbers change the names of a character from a point that wouldn't even make sense in regards to Americanization.The names I can understand (I was surprised that 4Kids pretty much kept all the main character's name, including the human's from their original), and as for signs and whatnot, well, their reason is simply because they want to americanized the show. It's a reason why YuGiOh on the dub is set in America when it's originally in Japan. Apparently, they (the dubbers) think if it was all japanese, the kids would all go "huh?" It's a very stupid reason (look at Digimon, they admit they're in Japan for pete's sake), but there's the reason.
Rockman.EXE/Megaman.EXE is a good example. We've got tons of characters whose names are already in English - either from the games, or just a helluva lot of english names.
Instead, we get confusing and nonsensical name changes like "Fireman" to "Torchman" and "Colorman" to "Whackoman". Considering that these characters already have original names which make sense when it comes to an American audience, and have been localized already - it's stupid as hell to change them. Hell, Fireman has been around since the mid 1980's in the US, but they still randomly changed his name.
Another example is Digimon, as I've mentioned before. They've changed "Fairymon" to "Kazemon". That's right - you heard me. From "Fairy" TO "Kaze". "Blizzardmon" to "Korriakumon". "Ruki" to "Rika" - one foreign-sounding name to another. "Wallace" to "Willis".
Another such confusing change was in the Pokemon anime, in which one character's name got changed from "Kenta" to "Yoshi".
I could go on and on, but I hope now you can see that dubbers randomly change names for more reasons than just localization. Sometimes they do it just because they're dumbshits who think they know better.
