Kudo or Kudou

[90s Holmes]

I may be the only one with this problem, but I genuinely can't figure out if Shinichi's last name is spelled Kudo or Kudou. I watch a fansub that always writes his name as Kudou, but everywhere I look online it's spelled Kudo.

Normally I'd just assume that it's spelled Kudo, but I'm also familiar with instances where a character's name is changed from one spelling to another when it airs in other countries, to keep from being too confusing with it's pronunciation. For example Kokichi Ouma was changed to Kokichi Oma. It's pronounced the same, but the official game changed it to the latter version when it got to America because it would "too confusing" for viewers.

Really, the only thing confusing to me is that there are two spellings.

Anyways I would appreciate the help. Thanks!

[90s Holmes]

Looking again, I also see it spelled Kudō as well. Similarly I see Ran’s name spelled Mōri, sometimes. 
I just need to know which ones are correct, and if that’s more than one then I’d like to know which spelling I should use most often.

[Nonastronomical Unit]

They are all different ways of transliterating the sounds of Japanese names into English. It's hard to say which is more correct than the other as there is more than one system in use. I confess the more I look into it, the less I am sure of how to properly answer your question. It's anecdotal but I have seen many of those spellings as well.

 

The Wikipedia page about Japanese romanization may provide some info on how those spellings happened. The last link under External Links (on the same page) also seems pretty relevant to the question you're asking.

 

A thing I would like to suggest is that "ou" may have been used more when it was more difficult to type and display special characters on the computer. Before cellphones were common it wasn't easy to set up a way to type special characters without a lot of hassle. This was my own experience, however, and may not apply to everyone.

[90s Holmes]

Thanks for the info and the links. It does seem to be a question with no real answer, but it’s interesting to think about, right?