Leave original author in data and modify the view

I would like to retain the original author being aliased in the data and just modify the view. The only issue I've found in doing this is with the folded view of the comment! I've not found a way without mucking the template file in the comment module to change the user name in the link (not even hook_link_alter). Something is broken in Drupal core preventing the comment folded theme from modifying the user name. I've managed to alias the view of the comment in expanded mode easily.