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I can only assume that it's executive meddling, but has there ever been a reason stated for the re-titling of the first harry potter book for US Markets?

Sidney
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    -1 - A simple Google would have answered this question. –  Oct 26 '15 at 14:31
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    @AncalagonTheBlack but that is true for 85%ish of the questions here... – Cherubel Oct 26 '15 at 14:57
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    @AncalagonTheBlack A simple Google search just garnered many results, all with differing reasons on the subject, and none from great sources anyway. +1 from me. – Dave Johnson Oct 26 '15 at 15:35
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    "Wand Boy and the Magic Rock" –  Oct 26 '15 at 19:09
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    @Michael butt mericuns iz smart :((((( – Sidney Oct 26 '15 at 19:13
  • Since you asked for a stated reason, this doesn't really constitute an answer, but (my impression as an American is that) the object in question is fairly well known in the US under the name "sorcerer's stone", not under the name "philosopher's stone" as it is in the UK. So this is effectively a translation from British English to American English. – David Z Oct 27 '15 at 14:33
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    @DavidZ I might argue that in that it's only known today as the Sorcerer's Stone because of harry potter. According to Google Ngrams, the "Sorcerer's stone" didn't appear until 1995, while the "philosophers stone" is mentioned somewhat consistently for the last two centuries. Even when the sorcerer's stone appeared, it has barely reached 1/10 the presence of the philosophers stone. – Sidney Oct 27 '15 at 14:50
  • @Sidney huh, I have to yield to the data then. I had definitely heard of the sorcerer's stone many times before I started reading HP books (around 2000), and I think the first time was before 1995 but I can't be sure. – David Z Oct 27 '15 at 15:10
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    @AncalagonTheBlack a good number of google searches these days direct us to threads where someone asks a question and the only answer is "A simple Google would have answered this question" – Darth Hunterix Oct 27 '15 at 21:16
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    It's a strange feeling when your most up-voted question on the entire stack exchange network by far is about harry potter. =/ – Sidney Oct 28 '15 at 18:31
  • Meanwhile in french, the title translate as ".. and the the sorcerers' school"... apparently, even the notion of a stone was too confusing. – dna Dec 11 '18 at 16:38

3 Answers3

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Q: What kind of manuscript changes had to be made to make the U.S. version more understandable to American readers? Specific things, like the title change of the first Harry Potter book? (The original British title is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.)

A: Very few changes have been made in the manuscript. Arthur Levine, my American editor, and I decided that words should be altered only where we felt they would be incomprehensible, even in context, to an American reader. I have had some criticism from other British writers about allowing any changes at all, but I feel the natural extension of that argument is to go and tell French and Danish children that we will not be translating Harry Potter, so they'd better go and learn English. The title change was Arthur's idea initially, because he felt that the British title gave a misleading idea of the subject matter. In England, we discussed several alternative titles and "Sorcerer's Stone" was my idea.

(src: JKR eToys interview, etoys.com, Fall 2000)

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DVK-on-Ahch-To
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    This isn't actually a very good answer - what was "misleading" about the title? Neither "philosopher" nor "sorcerer" are particularly unknown or difficult words in either country, so this is really only half a reason. – Nagora Oct 28 '15 at 10:26
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    @Nagora I hope you were referring to JKR's interview answer and not my StackExchange asnwer (which merely quotes, y'know, the book author :) – DVK-on-Ahch-To Oct 28 '15 at 15:00
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    @Nagora There was a very long chain of comments that were deleted from this answer - Essentially stating that the "Philosopher's Stone" is not as widely heard of in the U.S. - (backed up by a Google N-gram) - leading to the view that "Philsopher's Stone" might be taken too literally and could potentially be misleading to American consumers in a negative way, who might get the view that the book would contain a bunch of long-winded philosophy or philosophers. The word "philosopher's", at the least, is not "exciting" to most American children. All the "maybe's" are why its controversial. – DoubleDouble Oct 28 '15 at 17:47
  • I'm American. My reaction when I got to the descriptions of the stone and what it did later in the book was "Why isn't it called the Philosopher's Stone? That's obviously the inspiration for it." However, I do believe that Sorcerer's Stone is a more exciting title. – Michael Richardson Nov 17 '21 at 19:21
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Scholastic Corporation bought the U.S. rights at the Bologna Book Fair in April 1997 for US$105,000, an unusually high sum for a children's book. They thought that a child would not want to read a book with the word "philosopher" in the title and, after some discussion, the American edition was published in September 1998 under the title Rowling suggested, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Rowling claimed that she regretted this change and would have fought it if she had been in a stronger position at the time.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

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Vishvesh
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For English Children's Lit trying to sell in America, the translation process is almost a given - just as translations to any other language are. Because yes, there are enough differences between American English and the UK English to be treated that way - ESPECIALLY with learning readers and especially if you want it to succeed.

People who want to lose themselves in a book need to be able to do so fairly seamlessly without having to consult a UK-to-American dictionary to figure out why someone lit a fire to check inside their vehicle's footwear in search of... ???? when reading "He pulled out his torch to look in the boot for the wayward spanner"

And we can all giggle about the differences in language, but this is about selling books. And - probably rightfully - the attraction of a title that seemed pedantic rather than mystical in the US was questioned.

Mike Broughton
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    You give pre-teens too little credit. I think many of them know that "lighting a torch to look in the boot after a spanner" means "using a flashlight to check the trunk for a wrench". In fact, teaching them how to understand missing words by dictionary and/or context is an important lesson. Along with the secondary lesson that UK and US have different meanings for words. BTW, I get torch and spanner, sort of, but how in the hell did a car's trunk become a boot? – Xalorous Oct 27 '15 at 23:14
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    @Xalorous You mean "How the heck did a car's boot become a trunk? A storage compartment at the back of a vehicle is the least trunk-like thing I can imagine. "Look, kids! This part of the car is named after your torso! Or possibly part of an elephant." (Seriously, though, etymology usually only makes sense by accident. Just run with it.) – user867 Oct 27 '15 at 23:46
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    Well, in the US, a trunk is a big solid box, mainly associated with travelling by steamship. AND old timey cars used to have one where the back bumper would be. Check here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_trunk, see the Model A picture. – Xalorous Oct 28 '15 at 00:15
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    @user867 Well, it's not footwear either. – user253751 Oct 28 '15 at 01:46
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    This doesn't actually explain this particular title change. – curiousdannii Oct 28 '15 at 03:23
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    The American English expression for "Philosopher's Stone" is "Philosopher's Stone" so this doesn't really apply. – Jon Hanna Oct 28 '15 at 10:24
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    Apparently coaches and carriages used to have a sort of track or platform around them for poorer people to sit travelling sideways and these became known as boots. Over time, these became more focused on the back and for storage rather than on the side for passengers. Cars didn't have much storage at first, and a rack for trunks and other luggage appeared, then became internal. In the US the storage became the trunk and in the UK the older name boot was used. At the time, a bit at the back for storage was a boot in a carriage and people would generally have remembered that. – ThruGog Oct 28 '15 at 11:12