Super Smash Bros. (N64) Character Name Origins

Hello, everyone! As you may or may not know, I am a huge Nintendo fan. I’ve made countless quizzes based on their Super Smash Bros. series. Its large and varied roster of gaming all-stars makes it very convenient to create quizzes based on the characters. One quiz idea I've had for a while now is a name origins quiz, where the quiztaker needs to list the origins of the names of Super Smash Bros. characters, or guess the character based on the origin of their name, or something along those lines. The problem with that is it's sort of a difficult thing to really make into a quiz on account of just how varied some of them can be, with some quite long winded, others short and sweet, and some entirely unknown. So, a blog!

Basically I'll just going through each Smash Bros. character and listing the origins of their name. Since there are alot of characters in Super Smash Bros. (89!) I'll be splitting the blog into five parts for each of the five games in the series, and each blog will include the characters introduced in its respective game. Since this is the first part I'll be discussing the 12 characters in the first Super Smash Bros. released for the Nintendo 64.

The history of Mario’s name is probably the most well-documented across all Smash fighters. It’s actually a pretty common piece of gaming trivia. I guess the best place to start this story would be at the very beginning, before he was ever called Mario. When developing Donkey Kong, Mario was given the placeholder name Ossan, which means 'middle-aged man' in Japanese, since that's sort of what he looked like at the time. Shigeru Miyamoto, the game’s director, would later change Mario's name to be Mr. Video, as he wanted Mario to be a character who would make cameo appearances in future games he directed, but was later changed as Miyamoto felt that if he kept that then Mario "would've disappeared off the face of the Earth". Mr. Video was renamed to Jumpman in reference to him being a man that jumps, and that was the name that stuck for the release of the 1981 Donkey Kong game in Japan. When it came time to localize the game, Nintendo of America was originally going to keep the Jumpman moniker until Nintendo of Japan asked them if they wanted to change the name to anything else.

Nintendo of America chose to name the character Mario, after Mario Segale. Segale was an Italian-American businessman and the landlord of the warehouse Nintendo of America was working out of. During the localization of Donkey Kong, Segale showed up at Nintendo headquarters and demanded overdue rent from then-president of Nintendo of America Minoru Arakawa. Arakawa calmed Segale down by promising Segale that he would receive his payment soon. The team localizing Donkey Kong noticed some physical similarities between Segale and the player character, so they decided to name him Mario. When asked about how he felt about being the namesake of the most popular video game character ever, Segale quipped, "You might say that I'm still waiting for my royalty checks."

Upon first glance you may think it's odd that they chose the word "Donkey" for his name considering that Donkey Kong is very much not a donkey - he's an ape! While developing the game Donkey Kong, Shigeru Miyamoto wanted the antagonist to have a name that clearly conveyed that he was a big, stupid ape. He looked through a English-Japanese dictionary to find something a bit catchier and found that donkey meant idiot, so he used that as the name of his new creation. When he told the people at Nintendo of America however, all they did was laugh. They had to explain to him that donkey didn't mean idiot, and that the dictionary probably confused it for the word ass (we were this close to living in a world with Ass Kong!) as ass can be used to refer to both a donkey or a stubborn person. Miyamoto still liked the sound of the name Donkey Kong, so it stuck around.

The second half of Donkey Kong's name has a very well-known history, much like Mario’s first name. You'll probably recognize 'Kong' from King Kong. In Japan this isn't as immediately obvious though. Kong is a generic word for large apes in Japan, even those with no association to King Kong. And as we've already discussed, Miyamoto wanted the name for his big, stupid ape to mean big, stupid ape. Miyamoto combined the words Donkey (for stupid) and Kong (for big ape), and saw no real issue with using the word Kong in the name of his lady-stealing, building-climbing giant ape. However, when Nintendo marketed the game overseas they ran into legal trouble with Universal over copyright infringement involving their own large ape - King Kong. I'll skip over the nitty gritty details of the case, but ultimately it was ruled that Donkey Kong was distinct enough from King Kong to not be considered copyright infringement. It was also revealed that Universal didn't even own King Kong in the first place and thus had no grounds to sue Nintendo. Three cheers for the public domain!

A popular theory for Link’s name is that he’s meant to symbolize a ‘link’ between the player and the game, and this is what I thought too for a long time. However, after I started doing research for this project I learned that this was almost completely false. At no point did anyone from Nintendo ever confirm this was the case, and was likely just a bit of speculation that got spread like wildfire. Can’t really blame anyone for believing this, since it’s a pretty plausible theory. Plus, the official reveal of Link’s true name origin was only ever published in a 2012 interview on a French gaming website! The interview talked a bit about the development of the WiiU, how a Metroid game could work on the WiiU (even though there was never a Metroid game released for the WiiU), and Miyamoto’s big, surprised eyes upon discovering that people like F-Zero. All in all a fun read, but what we're focusing on for the moment is the part where Miyamoto discusses the process of designing Link for The Legend of Zelda.

Samus was named after the famous soccer (football) player Edson Arantes do Nascimento. Nicknamed Pelé, he was sometimes known as the King of Football and is generally regarded as one of the best players of all-time. Hiroji Kiyotake, one of the designers for the original Metroid game, was a huge fan of the sport. He wanted to name the character after one of the players, and Pelé was one of his favourites. However, he somehow misread the name as Samus Arantes do Nascimento. I have no idea how he did that, seeing as Samus and Edson both sound and look nothing alike, but somehow he did. I think it worked out for the best though. Edson sounds too normal for it to be a cool, spacey name. Samus also isn't quite as explicitly masculine as Edson is, so overall I think it works better for the (spoilers!) female intergalactic bounty hunter.

Samus’ last name, Aran, also comes from Pelé. It’s just the first part of Arantes. At least Kiyotake got part of his name correct!

Yoshi comes from the nickname of one of the illustrators working at Nintendo at the time, Mie Yoshimura. Her nickname was combined with ‘Nessie’, the nickname of the Loch Ness Monster, to create Yoshi. Some earlier products refer to him as ‘Yossy’, which is a translation quirk on behalf of the fact that the ‘shi’ and ‘si’ sounds are represented by the same character in Japanese. Localizers will oftentimes just choose whichever one sounds better when translating. Some went with 'Yoshi', some went with 'Yossy', but eventually the former spelling become the standard.

The origin of Kirby's name, like Mario's, is among the more well-known. Do you remember when Universal sued Nintendo over the usage of the word 'Kong'? Well, the lawyer that defended Nintendo during this case was none other than John Kirby. It’s commonly believed that Kirby (the character) was named after Kirby (the lawyer) as Nintendo’s way of saying thanks. While based in reality, this isn't technically true.

Originally Kirby's name was Popopo, but Nintendo and HAL wanted to pick a name with more western appeal. They created a list of names and would strike off any options they didn't like. As they narrowed down the list they saw Kirby on there. Kirby, as in the John Kirby that defended Nintendo in court. The developers thought it would be funny if John and Popopo had the same name, so they decided to go with Kirby. So while Kirby wasn't named after John Kirby, the existence of John Kirby did help inspire Kirby's name. It's a very important distinction.

Another theory is that Kirby was named after the Kirby brand of vacuum cleaners, in reference to his inhale ability which is sort of similar to how a vacuum cleaner works. I was unable to find anything to corroborate this theory, however. In fact I couldn’t even find anyone saying that it was true, but it’s what my friend told me as a kid and what I believed for a very long time. I felt like I should include it on this list.

Fox is probably the most boring name we'll be discussing today. You see, Fox is... a fox. He is named Fox because he is a fox. That is the most thought that was put into his name.

His surname, McCloud, was chosen by the game's lead programmer, Giles Goddard, though he's never gone on record to explain why he chose it. So sad. At least it sounds really cool.

There have been many popular fan theories for the origins of Luigi’s name throughout the years, though most people generally fall into two camps: it either comes from the conveniently named Mario and Luigi’s pizzeria found near Nintendo's headquarters, or it’s a pun on the Japanese word ruiji (meaning similar) which is meant to poke fun at the fact that in the olden days Luigi was just a colour swapped version of Mario. However, both of these theories are false. When creating the younger Mario brother, Miyamoto wanted him to have a popular Italian name. Mario was the most popular Italian name, and he wanted his brother to have a name of similar popularity. Looking at a list of popular Italian names, the second most popular name right after Mario just happened to be Luigi.

I don’t know if it was ever officially confirmed anywhere, but both Wikipedia and the Earthbound Wiki agree that Ness’ name is intended to be a reference to the SNES. They are anagrams of each other, and Ninten, the protagonist of Mother 1, is a pretty clear reference to Nintendo. Also worth mentioning that Ness is a homonym of the non-super NES. That might not be intentional, but it is certainly true.

In Earthbound, the player also has the ability to rename Ness. If the player doesn't want to rename Ness then they can press the ‘Don’t Care’ button, which will cycle through 6 names selected by the developers. Ness will always be the first name to appear in both the English and Japanese versions of the game when pressing the button, and most of the rest of the names are just common names in their respective languages.

There are a few interesting preset names though. While every preset English name is just a common English name, the Japanese version contains some references. For instance, one of the preset names in that version is Mario. I don't think I should have to explain the significance of that name. Another Japanese preset name is John, named after John Lennon of The Beatles. This is far from the only Beatles reference in Earthbound - many NPCs use song lyrics in their dialogue, some Beatles songs are sampled for background music, and John Lennon’s song ‘Mother’ was the inspiration for the Japanese title of the series (bonus name origin for you 😉)! The last Japanese preset name that contains a reference is Takuya, which is a reference to Takuya Kimura. He was a singer in the Japanese boy band SMAP, which was widely popular throughout Japan. The rest of the preset names are just common Japanese names.

What's cool about these default naming references is that Ness isn't the only character in Earthbound who has these. You are also able to rename your party members, as well as Ness' dog. Each of them have default names that match with Ness' names. For example, Ness has Mario, Paula has Peach, Jeff has Luigi, Poo has Toad, and King has Yoshi, which are other prominent Mario characters. To match John, Paula has Yoko, Jeff has Paul, Poo has George, and King has Ringo, which are the other members of The Beatles (or in Yoko's case, heavily associated with them). Lastly, to match Takuya, Paula has Goroko, Jeff has Tsuyoshi, Poo has Shingo, and King has Mashirorin, which are the other members of SMAP.

Is puff. Is jiggly. Are you a jokester? *crushes your head like an empty soda can*

As far as I can tell, no one on the Pokémon development team has ever confirmed the origins of Jigglypuff’s name, but I don’t think we really need to have confirmation to figure out how Nintendo came up with it. Most Pokémon's names are portmanteau of two relatively common English words. In this case, jiggly and puff. This is undoubtedly referring to Jigglypuff’s jiggly, puffy body. So great! We’re done here, right? Well, no. A name like Jigglypuff wouldn’t really translate very well into alot of languages, as most languages aren't English. Translators each gave a different name for Jigglypuff that would be much better suited for their language. I figured I may as well go over the origins of these translations since this is the sort of stuff I find interesting apparently.

Starting with Japanese (Jigglypuff's mother tongue, so to speak), their name is プリン (Purin), which is a type of Japanese pudding. It’s most comparable to flan. Bulbapedia (the Pokémon version of Wikipedia) says it could also be connected to プチ (puchi), which translates into English as ‘petit’ meaning small. They also list the English word ‘pretty’ as a potential origin.

In French, their name is Rondoudou. Similar to the Japanese name, the primary origin for the name is a type of sweet. Roudoudou is a type of caramel candy served in a shell (at least I think it is... all the sources I found for this were French :P ). It could also be inspired by rond (round), doux (soft) and doudou (child talk for something soft and reassuring).

In German, their name is Pummeluff. Pummel- comes from Pummelig, a German word meaning chubby. -uff comes from fluff, which means... fluff.

In Mandarin Chinese, their name is Pàngdīng. It's a portmanteau of the words pàng and bùdīng. Pàng means fat and bùdīng means pudding.

Cantonese Chinese features two different translations, one being Buhndīng and the other being Bōbōkàuh. Buhndīng has very similar origins to Pàngdīng. Buhn means fat and boudīng means pudding. For Bōbōkàuh, bō means ball and kàuh... also means ball! It's just ballballball!

These are all the official localizations of Jigglypuff's name. All other languages use either the English or Japanese names. Some common threads between each localization are naming it after sweets, being round and fat, or being soft and fluffy. Sometimes all three!

So, with that, we have fully explained the origins of the names of each of the 12 original Super Smash Bros. characters to the best of our ability given the scraps of information Nintendo has decided to give us. I hope you thought this topic was at least half as interesting as I did! I found it surprisingly fun to learn about the name origins of these characters. In particular, I really enjoyed learning about the characters whose name origins I thought I knew, but were actually completely wrong.

If you enjoyed this blog, then you’ll probably also enjoy this blog by toowise where they go over the name origins of various bands. It has a very similar format to mine, which is a little funny because I had already written about half of this blog when toowise uploaded theirs. Of course, in usual Insaneo-style, I spent close to year writing the other half so that January blog is actually quite old now. But if you're hankering for more name origins, check out toowise! 

That’s all from me for now. See you in the Melee name origins!

© Me

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