With the upcoming release date of Netflix's original series, The Witcher, quickly approaching, more and more details about the series have been made public knowledge. One of which being the decision to change the character Dandelion's name to Jaskier, which was met with some confusion and backlash from fans.
Dandelion serves as the main character Geralt's self-proclaimed best friend and appears in many of their adventures throughout the series of Witcher novels and short stories. With regards to the books, he serves as a secondary character, but unlike the other secondary characters, such as Yennefer and Ciri, fans have yet to see promotional material by way of posters or videos featuring Dandelion in any way.
Recently, Lauren Hissrich, creator and showrunner of Netflix's The Witcher, has come under fire for changing Dandelion's to Jaskier. In a recent trailer breakdown video posted on Netflix's official YouTube channel, Hissrich along with executive producer, Tomek Baginski, took a deep dive into the official trailer for The Witcher and during the video, she briefly addresses the controversy over the decision to change Dandelion's name, but does not fully explain the reasoning behind her decision.
The Witcher series was written by a Polish author and originally, a lot of the secondary and tertiary characters featured Polish names and thus, Dandelion's original Polish name was Jaskier before The Witcher were published in North America. Therefore, Hissrich opted to use Dandelion's original name instead, but again, does not exactly discuss at great length why or how that decision ultimately came about. Perhaps she just prefers the Polish name.
Though, in retrospect, Dandelion was the only secondary character to have his name changed when the North American version of the books were released, not including Geralt's horse Roach, although the horse's orignal Polish name Płotka loosely translated in English means Roach. Many of the other characters, such as Geralt and Yennefer, all retained their original names when the novels were adapted for a North American audience, so it's unclear why the localization team felt the need to change Jaskier's name to Dandelion.
On the other hand, Dandelion is the name that a lot of people who are fans of The Witcher identify him as and is quite a popular character in his own right. Why then would Hissrich opt for a more obscure representation of Dandelion's character with regards to North American audiences? Maybe she will articulate herself further in a later interview, but this minute change will likely not discourage fans from watching the Netflix series given the large amount of positive reception the series has already received.
Netflix's The Witcher premieres on December 20th, 2019.