The Origins of Video Game Names

Blogger Drew Mackie has posted a lengthy analysis of the etymology of dozens of names from popular video game characters. It examines the real-life and mythological roots of names from Final Fantasy, Zelda, Mario Bros., Street Fighter, and many other prominent franchises, complete with citations where appropriate. Quoting: "It's speculated that Street Fighter's Russian wrestler Zangief takes his name from a real-life Russian wrestler, Victor Zangiev. More interesting to me is that the working name for this character was Vodka Gobalsky. This is notable for two reasons — for one, that this name is amazing [and] deserves to enter into the public consciousness and, for another, that it bears a striking resemblance to the name of a Russian boxer in Nintendo's Punch-Out!! series, Vodka Drunkenski. I'm sure this says something about Japanese perception of Russian people. The latter Vodka, by the way, goes by the name Soda Popinski in US translations of the game, presumably because Nintendo of America didn't allow references to booze."

Comments

Re:Why is this Games and not Idle?

[binarylarry]

Which is a shame considering the seriousness of the topic.

Oddly enough...

[minvaren]

...they left out the origin of the "Jack" character in Jack Attack.

(I appear to be showing my age here... Hold on, there's some pesky kids out front...)

I never thought I'd be justified in saying this,

[uxbn_kuribo]

But my GOD. TLDR, much? And half of it is either pointless speculation, or stuff like "I don't actually KNOW the origin of..." Must be a slow news day in IT.

Donkey

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA:

"His last name seems likes a clear reference to King Kong, but the Donkey part doesn't. Contrary to many other urban legends that say otherwise, Donkey Kong earned his first name as a result of Miyamoto wanting to call the villain something that conveyed a sense of stubbornness and stupidity, though he later found out that the English-speaking world doesn't interpret the word donkey in this way."

Wrong. Of course we do. From the OED:

donkey
1. a. A familiar name for the ass.
2. a. A stupid or silly person.

Why do you think Gordon Ramsay keeps using the word to describe the chefs who work under him? He didn't just pull it out of his ass.

Stories behind game names...

[HimajinX]

Working in Japanese to English game localization, I'm often assigned the task of coming up with English names for characters. Usually this is just a transliteration, but in some cases a completely new name is required. The publisher makes the final call, and I've had to fight hard sometimes to get names that just won't work in English changed. Japanese developers often go to great lengths to research meaningful names for their characters, but not understanding how differently names can be interpreted in other languages, they can get attached to some really ridiculous ones. The only way I could deter one developer from using "Milla" for the name of a huge, ugly dragon boss was by telling them that most players would associate the name with a supermodel...

Russia-Japan issue

[SailorSpork]

http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa021400a.htm

Anyone familiar with Japanese history would understand Japanese poking constant fun of the Russians, their neighbors. Russia is a bit of a sore spot to Japan since they are still disputing sovereignty of mineral rich islands that Russia claimed as a results of Japan losing WWII. It doesn't help that Japanese culture has been known as being a bit on the racist and xenophobic side.

Re:Russia-Japan issue

[Enderandrew]

In context, he kept suggesting to me that all Americans fit the stereotypes of southern rednecks, and he kept quoting the fact that Americans held slaves, and that some Americans fought a war to protect slavery.

I countered that we are the only country to arguably fight a war to end slavery. Either way, he was adamant that Swedes never had slaves, when in fact, they did. American slave-owners in the South sometimes allowed their slaves to earn money and buy their way out of slavery as well, so the American slave concept wasn't completely removed from the concept of a serf. Especially given that many serfs lived their entire lives in servitude with no real hope of escaping their situation.

I also countered that his hatred and stereotyping for all Americans could be construed as racism. He was adamant that he wasn't racist, but rather that all Americans were horrible, evil, Imperialists with no education or respect for human life.

In talking to other Europeans they tell me that their perception is that America is a very racist country, and that Europeans aren't racist. Which I find odd, because in England I hear a lot of anti-French sentiments, and vice-versa. I was refused service in a restaurant for being American, and racist epithets are common at soccer/football matches in Europe, where as that behavior isn't tolerated in American stadiums.

My point is that judgment and stereotyping is a very human condition. Sadly, it comes quite naturally, and I think it requires conscious effort to combat racism and cast aside racist judgments.

Re:Russia-Japan issue

[Enderandrew]

I don't respond to ACs normally, especially those that troll, but I should clarify here.

In England, in an Italian bistro I was told as soon as I walked in with my wife and two friends that there were no tables available for us, despite seeing an almost empty restaurant. We hadn't opened our mouths. We were well dressed. A manager saw what happened, chastised the host and had us seated. But the waitress ignored us all night, and we spent over two hours basically waiting for pasta and drinks while everyone around us was served.

I spoke to my wife's British family about the incident, and they said Italians, French, etc. can spot Americans often by their shoes or jeans. They know what isn't designer, and what Americans wear.

In a related note, when I was in Cannes, I needed to use a toilet. Every business I went to told me they had no toilets. I went to a tourist information kiosk, and was told the entire town had no toilets, and I had to walk out of town, and go to the beach. Again, I was dressed nice. I walked into a casino, and was immediately escorted out before I said a word. They wanted to know why I was trying to walk into their casino when I apparently didn't look like a customer they wanted.

Another tourist center informed me there was a public toilet immediately around the corner, which I knew to be a lie. I said I had just come from there, and they told me to leave the tourist center.

And this was during the middle of the Cannes film festival when presumably there were tons of Americans present. Maybe I didn't look rich enough, or maybe it was simply that I was American.

Later that day, I was waiting for a small train holding my two-year old daughter. When the train arrived, someone shoved me quite hard to push me out of the way. I fell over a stone fountain next to me, twisted my knee, and was holding my daughter up so she didn't hit the stone.

I quite literally cried out in pain, and couldn't get up. No one apologized, or offered to help me up. They just got on the train and ignored me.

I never intend to go back there again.

Re:wow

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Don't we have a some real problems to address, like, oh, we're going to run out of easily available water and energy, and the environment is going to change so much that about a billion people will lose their home over the next 15 years?

Please hand in your geek card immediately.

See, this is what serious geeks do. They think about stuff. Lots of stuff, and they think about it a lot. Some of it is trivial, some of it is important, and a surprising amount of it appears to be trivial and turns out the be very important later. They don't decide whether they'll think about something based on its importance; they decide based on whether it's interesting to them at the moment.

The exact same people who worry about things like the etymology of the names of video game characters are the people who come up with solutions to serious environmental, economic, and technical problems. And the people who whine, "Why are you wasting your time on X when Y is so much more important?!?" ... are the people who will never put enough serious, obsessive thought into anything to make any serious, long-lasting impact of any kind.

Dhalsim

[vivin]

The article says that Dhalsim comes from Kerala (a state that's a narrow strip in the southwestern corner of the Indian peninsula), and that his name is a Malayalam word. That's strange, because I'm Malayalee and I'm pretty sure that "Dhalsim" is not a Malayalam word. Hmm...

Re:is it missing this?

[Dragonslicer]

Anyone know what Starcraft means? Galactic warfare? Space-land-for-battle? It kinda reminds me of Chevy Starcraft, too...

It's because the game is essentially Warcraft in space.