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In The Witcher (Netflix), the bard, played by Joey Batey, is named Jaskier but in the game and the English translations of the books, he is referred to as Dandy short for Dandelion. Why the name change?

I do see that his original Polish name is Jaskier, but it was changed for an American/English audience, so why not continue that in the Netflix series?

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    As far as I can research online, the original english translation of this name in the books was "Dandilion", so keeping "Jaskier" is not a move to show that they are more focused on books rather then games.
    – TK-421
    Commented Dec 23, 2019 at 7:18
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    And they kept the english names for Roach and Mousesack!
    – BlueMoon93
    Commented Dec 24, 2019 at 15:18
  • It probably doesn't help that "Dandy" is (in some locales) slang for someone who is camp or gay...
    – Chronocidal
    Commented Jan 13, 2020 at 13:57
  • Because it should not be "translated".
    – Mithoron
    Commented Feb 4, 2020 at 17:17

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The showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich gives the following explanation in an interview with ComicBook.com:

We call him Jaskier... Yeah, absolutely. Jaskier is 100% in the show. It's interesting, because people ask about Jaskier all the time and why we went with his original name. It is funny, part of it was because when I read the books I read it as Dandelion (the flower), and then I listened to the audiobooks. Dandelion (pronounced Dan-dill-ion), how would I get that?

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  • Jaskier is the bard's original polish firstname in the books. Jaskier translates as buttercup, a yellow-petal flower that grows in the wild.
  • Dandelion is probably a chosen translation for Jaskier that also represents a yellow-petal flower in English.

For example, in Slovakian language, his name is Blyskáč which means Ficaria Verna, also another close related yellow flower to the Buttercup or in German he is called Rittersporn which translated to Delphinium, another type of flower from the same genus that has multiple color patters.

So "Dandelion" is the English version of Jaskier that respects the meaning and was probably chosen because it sounds better then Buttercup for the character.

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    That's all well and good, but the question seems to be aware of that fact. But the point it's trying to make and asking for is that he already had an English name in the games as well as the official translations of the original books, which makes the switch back to the Polish name for the TV series kind of odd.
    – Napoleon Wilson
    Commented Dec 23, 2019 at 11:04
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    @NapoleonWilson I wanted to point out the reference to the flower theme of the different name adaptations. Netflix choose Jaskier probably to stay true to the books or maybe because Andrzej wanted so as they were in contact with him throughout the filming of the show.
    – RigaCrypto
    Commented Dec 23, 2019 at 11:38

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