Somethings a name change migth be all that is need. When D&D turned Hobbits to Halflings, on top of changing the name they also got rid of the Hobbits hairy feet and made them all wear footware. And the Delicious In Dungeon example I gave, they made their Half-foots all have big round ears. If there were other changes made, I am unaware of them.
Free tip when making up your own word for something. Type your made up word into a search engine or two, just to make sure you did not miraculously spell a real word in another language. This happened to me once. I typed my made up word I going to use for the name of alien species, discovered that if I swapped places of two letters I would have spelled foreign language's word for insest. Not a term I wanted this entire species to associated with.
In case anyone was wondering, no I don't remember the language. It was way too long ago.