I wonder why most of the characters had slightly different names on the cartoon series. It's not like another company was trying to cash in on the success with a suspiciously-similar show (like how the characters on Baby Talk had names that were similar to the names of the characters from Look Who's Talking).
And the only character who kept his original name, Mad Dog, was among the few to not resemble his counterpart from the original special, even though the Mad Dog puppet was reused as Bowser, the in-universe counterparte to the character.