Why were there different names for some of the "British Versions" of the Harry Potter books?

The first book in the Harry Potter series and the movie adaptation both have a different title in the United Kingdom. British author J.K. Rowling titled her first book Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and her British publisher, Bloomsbury Publishing, retained that title. Scholastic later published the book in the U.S., changing the title to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and making other minor changes. When Warner Brothers bought the movie rights, it kept the American book title.

The Harry Potter in Tayside site quotes Rowling's explanation:

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... 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.

Other sources offer slightly different reasons for the title change. The Harry Potter Lexicon says, "Scholastic thought that a child wouldn't buy a book with the word 'philosopher' in the title." The U.K.-based Harry Potter Teaching Resources site suggests that the book was retitled "...presumably to make it sound more magic orientated rather than philosophy orientated!"

Perhaps Scholastic doubted that American grade-schoolers would be familiar with the mythic philosopher's stone, a mineral substance that could transform base metal into gold. Alchemists of the Middle Ages sought to discover the stone and attributed many great powers to it.

As a result of the name change, all the scenes in the movie that mention the stone were filmed twice -- once with actors saying "sorcerer's" and once with them saying "philosopher's." Maybe the alternate versions of those scenes will turn up on DVD someday soon.

It was released as 'Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone' in the UK and most other places and was the original title intended to always be used by J.K.Rowling.

When the book was brought over to America the publishers thought it would get a bad reception from young audiences because they wouldn't know what a philosopher was or want to read about one. The title 'Philosopher's Stone' was translated and used everywhere else except India where the translation for 'Sorcerer's Stone' was used.

Every time the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's stone was mentioned, the cast had to do two takes to call it by each name.

The two titles mean relatively the same thing but 'Philosopher' is a description better fitting to the 'Nicholas Flamel' that J.K.Rowling wanted to portray.

But frankly Harry Potter, J.K.Rowling and the whole phenomenon stemmed from Britain and so you will find some people becoming hostile when you refer to the originals as wrong or different...including me.

"Sorcerer" and "philosopher" do not mean the same thing.

The "philosopher's stone" was the name of a mythical mineral that old-time alchemists tried to produce because it could supposedly turn worthless metals into gold.

The story I've heard about the book title is that the publishers thought that Americans would not understand what the philosopher's stone was and that they'd be scared off by the word "philosopher." So the book was published here with the meaningless phrase "Sorcerer's stone" instead.

The Philosophers Stone is the proper name that JK Rowling chose, I don't know why the American edition is different (its ridiculous). But JK said in an interview that she really regrets giving them permission to change the title. The Philosophers Stone is not actually something that JK Rowling invented, it is actually a legendary stone that will transform metal into gold and make the owner immortal. Its true. And Nicolas Flamel is also a real person, alledged to have created this legendary stone. Just say Philosophers Stone, its the real title and sounds a lot more original than sorcerers stone.

A lot of words that we say here in America are different in England. It's like how "chips" and "crisps" are the same. The word that described the book in America was "sorcerer". The word that probably fits the definition of "sorcerer" in England is most likely "philosopher". That's my best guess.

J.K. Rowling is British, therefore Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the original and correct title - this is what Rowling intended the novel to be called.

It really gets on my nerves when people call Britain 'England'. IT IS NOT JUST ENGLAND! Britain is made up of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland (hopefully, the latter will be independent soon).

To answer your question, Americans have different words for things. Also, I heard the publishers thought that Americans would be too stupid to understand/pronounce the word 'Philosopher's' so they changed it to 'Sorcerer's'.