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The Origins of Video Game Names
6/20/2009

Blogger Drew Mackie has posted a lengthy anatomy 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 eminent franchises, entire 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 nabob 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 existent about whirlpool bath perception of Russian people. The latter Vodka, by the way, goes by the name Soda Popinski in US translations of the game, presumably because ebanking game of America didn't allow references to booze."

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