The Origins of Video Game Names 121
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."
Why is this Games and not Idle? (Score:1, Interesting)
The blogger writes in the style of the Onion or Cracked. Clearly this is not to be taken seriously.
Stories behind game names... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Russia-Japan issue (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Zelda Fitzgerald (Score:3, Interesting)
When I first heard of "The Legend of Zelda," the first thing I thought of was Zelda Fitzgerald, mostly because there are so few women I've ever heard of who were named Zelda. I assumed that was just a coincidence. It's very nice to discover that it wasn't: "The game's creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, has said that he took the character's name from Zelda Fitzgerald. "[Zelda Fitzgerald] was a famous and beautiful woman from all accounts, and I liked the sound of her name. So I took the liberty of using her name for the very first Zelda title."
Zelda was famous, yes, and beautiful yes, and for a while the Fitzgeralds were a "glamorous" and lionized couple. She also had a stormy marriage with F. Scot Fitzgerald, and was the fictionalized subject of some of his novels and stories. Zelda was famous for her unconventional behavior, and I've never been able to read between the lines to understand for sure just what this behavior consisted of; was jumping into a fountain in New York just youthful high spirits, or was there more to it than that? Every account talks of her "flirting" with men other than Fitzgerald, and famously saying that she wanted to "kiss" a thousand men; was it just flirting and just kissing? Some of what made her interesting was perhaps the prelude to her mental illness.
By all accounts, they were a sad, tragic, and unlucky couple.
Re:Russia-Japan issue (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey, that's not fair. In the year 2000 the good folk of Alabama even voted 59% in favour of allowing black and white people to marry each other (changing their state constitution)! That's a majority of forward thinking people!