How many times has Tails actually been called "Miles" outside of characters stating his full name?

Yeah, it was a Japanese-American dispute. Yasushi Yamaguchi, who created Tails, really wanted him to be named Miles and was backed by Sega of Japan. Sega of America, however, wanted him to be called Tails. Their compromise would end up being that "Miles" would be his real name, and "Tails" would be a nickname. That didn't stop Yamaguchi from sneaking in "Miles" wherever he could, which is why you see the name a lot in the Japanese version.

 

I think they were going for English (or word's that would be in a typical English speaker's vocabulary) names from the onset. Not just Sonic (Latin, but English-familiar), but Eggman himself, too. It's not like he's Sensei Tamago in Japanese.

I do wonder though if "Miles" was his name even before he was imported from a prior unrelated project and still a tanuki.

If the project had no direct relation to Sonic, would the speed theme have even applied?

 

The way Yamaguchi tells it, the tanuki character was never intended to be anything other than a placeholder. A fox was decided upon from the start.

 

It's an interesting choice for a placeholder though, given Super Mario Bros. 3's usage of the Tanuki/Tanooki in late 1988. It was the first thing that popularized a Tankui in the west beyond simply calling it a raccoon. Though it's an obvious progression from Tanuki to Kitsune if you're familiar with Japanese, there must have been some kind of influence from Mario in the same way that Alex Kidd was their take on a basic platformer guy. Mario's Tanuki also had a horizontal tail swipe attack.

It's funny nowadays though that in modern Mario games, the Super Leaf grants Luigi a Kitsune suit rather than a Tanuki suit, and thus makes him look rather Tails-ish.

 

He says it was from another project, so just what they had on hand at the time. Perhaps that project took some inspiration from SMB3.

 

Well, Tails did get a horizontal tail swipe in Sonic the Fighters and Sonic Adventure 1 (and maybe Sonic Battle too? I've forgotten most of that game, and there isn't a moveset list for him I can conveniently find.) I wonder if that of all things is the one remnant of his tanuki roots.