Just saw this on a linguistics friend’s Twitter:
The title fits it - it’s a gigantic treatise on one person’s looks into various backgrounds (or the theories therefor) of popular videogame characters. It mostly focuses on older, Japanese-made console games, with some arcade titles thrown in.
For example:
[ul]
[li] Zelda was named after the wife of American writer Francis Scott Fitzgerald.[/li][li] Link may have been named from a character in To Kill a Mockingbird - or it may be an allusion to the German word for “left,” as he is left-handed.[/li][li] Mario & Luigi may have been named after the Italian landlord of the Nintendo-of-America offices at the time and a nearby pizza joint, respectively, or from the Japanese words ‘marui’ and ‘ruiji,’ meaning ‘round’ and ‘similar.’[/li][li] Rosalina from Super Mario Galaxy has a different name in most every translation of the game worldwide.[/li][li] Olimar is the syllables of ‘Mario’ reversed and Anglicized. [/li][li] Robotnik means ‘worker’ in Polish and ‘peasant’ in Czech, and his appearance was based on Theodore Roosevelt.[/li][li] Street Fighter’s Ken Masters only got his last name to distinguish his action figure from Barbie’s boyfriend, since both were marketed by Hasbro.[/li][li] Dhalsim was likely named for a fighter in a Taiwanese martial arts film who shares his name and stretching ability.[/li][li] Cammy has twelve manufactured sisters, each named for a different (translated name for) a month of the year.[/li][li] Guile’s hero Charlie was originally called Nash, which was dropped in translation for not being common enough among English speakers.[/li][li] The Final Fantasy baddie Malboro may be named for the cigarettes, considering its attack method, or it may be Latin - mal-boros: bad breath.[/li][li] The elemental villains from FFIV - Milon, Kainazzo, Valvalis, and Rubicant - are recognizable as truncated names of the Malebranch, guardians of the 8th Circle from Dante’s Inferno.[/li][li] Mega Man has always had one-off references to music (the Japanese name is still RockMan, with his sister Roll and brother Blues), but Mega Man X7 took it even further, naming each boss after a member or collaborator of Guns N’ Roses - Izzy Glow, Grizzly Slash, Axel the Red, Duff McWhalen…[/li][/ul]
That’s in just some skimming from the first half of the article.
I had trouble calling it an “essay,” because it flows from character to character and game to game in a way that more resembles a rather erudite rant. It has over a hundred cites at the bottom, and plenty of links to other articles regarding the backgrounds (and sometimes political ramifications) of various game characters. There’s also a lot of speculation and evidence-without-conclusion going on, but I think most of the posters on the Dope will have just as much fun learning about possible childhood connections to literature and folklore as definite ones.
So! Discussion, skepticism, amazing finds? It took me an afternoon of occasional reading to get through it, and it’s a lot to chew on. Hopefully it’s as interesting a read for others. 