I try to merge them as best as I can. For example, I saw somewhere that Kuririn's name was a pun on "kuri" and "shaolin," so I started spelling it as "Kurilin" (which would also coincide with the English way of saying his name). But alas, I don't think "shaolin" was part of his naming scheme. Either way, though, Kuririn's name is spelled as "Kulilin" in the manga (on his hat when going to Namek). That's not wrong, so to preserve the familiar "Krillin" and the original intended name, I still use "Kurilin."
For me, generally, I find that most of my preferred naming coincides with Steve Simmons's. Let's use Tullece for example. His name is "ターレス" (Tāresu). Since there are no Ls in Japanese, "lettuce" would be "レタス" (retasu). Thus, you can keep the pun by using Tullece because the Ls substitute the Rs. We use a little creative freedom and add the double-L to preserve the pun as well, because if there was an intended double L, then his name would be spelled "ターッレス." So, it works out for "Tullece," really.
But honestly, "Vegerot"" does not make sense to me because that's not his name. There's preserving the pun, and then there's changing the character's name. His name is "ベジット" (Bejitto), or "Vegetto," "Vejitto," "Vegitto," even everybody's dreaded "Vegito" can be derived from it. The reason why people spell it as "Vegetto" mostly is because it's "Vegeta" and "Kakarotto," so much like "Tullece," a little bit of creative liberty is okay to preserve Goku and Vegeta's names. "Vegerot" is not proper. If his name was "Vegerot," it would be spelled "ベジロト" (Bejiroto), "ベジロット" (Bejirotto), "ベジーロト" (Bejīroto), or "ベジーロット" (Bejīrotto). None of those are his name, thus I refuse to use "Vegerot." Just because Funimation and Viz decided to omit the "to" from "Kakarotto," doesn't mean that suddenly Vegetto's name should be changed. Yes, "Kakarot" is not technically wrong, as all consonants besides "N" end in a vowel in Japanese (i.e. Torankusu), but that doesn't mean that Vegetto's name should suffer. If anything, "Veget" would be more accurate than "Vegerot."
Moving right along, the one that always irritated me, but I sort of get it now, "Blooma." I get it. Her name is "ブルマ" (Buruma). The double-O and the U in this case has the same sound. So, it can be "Boolooma," and if we had to omit one of the double-Os, you can omit the ones before the L, so it would be "Blooma." And it preserves the name pun of "bloomers." Totally get it. But alas, I find that "Bulma" sounds a lot closer to the way her name is pronounced in Japanese -- that and the fact that I'm used to seeing this spelling growing up and it did appear on her shirt -- so, that's what I go with.
Sometimes, the puns are puns and don't have to be so on-the-nose. With Trunks? Yes. With Dr. Brief? Yes. But a lot of the puns aren't meant to be so literal. "Kakarotto" is supposed to be a pun on "carrot," but people don't use "Cacarrot," right? Broli is named after "broccoli," but people don't change his name to "Broccoli" just because that's his pun. That's why I don't really buy the "Vegerot" argument that it preserves the puns. More than anything, Vegetto doesn't have a pun, but is a merging of the two characters' names. Just like Gotenks.
At the end of the day, the majority of my preferred spellings fall in line with Steve Simmons's. And yes, I sat there and went through every character's name (thank you Daizenshuu 7) and derived it myself. There are few things that I don't agree with Simmons about, but for the most part, I think he's spot-on. But as a rule of thumb for myself, I want to keep it as close to the Japanese spelling as possible and if there's room for creative freedom due to the limitations of integrating words into Japanese characters (like Tullece, for example), then I go ahead and use that creative freedom to adhere to the pun a little bit. But if not, then so be it. To me, being truthful to the spelling in Japanese takes precedence over the pun because that's the character's name. Regardless of whether we dumb it down and translate it to make it convenient for us to be able to understand it, I don't think we can mess with their names in the process.
