The Name of the Game: Character Naming Bit by Bit
A couple months back I wrote an article about how the names of some of the most iconic video game mascots came to be. Today we’re going to take that idea a step further and look at the architecture of character naming within games and how it has evolved from the early days of arcades and home entertainment system gaming to the modern era of monolithic consoles. When I say “architecture,” I’m referring to the names for the various characters and the relationships of those names to each other — as well as the archetypes that those characters and names fulfill within their video game narratives.
For the purposes of this discussion, I’m going to look at two franchises: Mario and Destiny — chosen because I think they serve as important examples of the early days of Nintendo and Sega, versus the modern generation of Sony and Microsoft. Early video game naming architecture will be represented by the Mario franchise, while the naming architecture found in Destiny will represent the modern era because it was the most successful new gaming franchise launch at the time of its release in 2014 and its sequel (Destiny 2) has won awards for best game of the year and hosts an active community of more than 10 million players.
Once Nintendo had decided to hang their little red hat on Mario as the name and face of the franchise, they needed to build out other characters that played well with him. Mario is a classic protagonist and he needs motivation and an enemy. Since the first appearance of Mario his primary motivation has been to reunite with his perpetual love interest, Princess Peach, who is repeatedly captured by his archenemy Bowser.
The princess who evolved out of the concept of the “Lady” character from the original Donkey Kong arcade game has been known variably as Princess Peach or Princess Toadstool in the Japanese- and English-speaking markets, respectively. Peach is an evocative name, as the game designers wanted to give her a sense of sweetness and optimism. The naming style showed a departure from that of the other human characters in play at the time (Mario and Luigi, which are familiar, Italian given names), but it possibly served to make her separate from the hero and his companion — as she would not be a playable character for several years and her primary importance was to personify Mario’s motivation.
Peach vs. Toadstool: Why does a stone fruit princess rule the fungi kingdom? The naming inconsistency arose because she was a princess named Peach ruling over a kingdom of Mushrooms (with “Toads” or toadstool subjects named after the common mushroom). Fair cause for confusion, right? For 11 years she was known as Princess Toadstool everywhere outside of Japan before having her name unified as Princess Peach in Super Mario 64.
Once the world of Mario expanded beyond the scaffolding and barrel-jumping of the Donkey Kong arcade game, it was time to introduce Bowser — a new spikey, fire-breathing, and aggressive archenemy. Bowser is the english name for King Koopa. To understand this name we have to reverse engineer from the lower level Koopa characters that we will meet later. Those characters, and King Koopa in turn, were named for a Korean rice and soup delicacy called gukbap — “Koopa” is the anglicized, phonetic round-trip translation. During development, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, considered naming all of the evil characters in Mario after Korean dishes, but ultimately King Koopa and his Koopa minions were the only ones that went that route.
What’s with Bowser then? Nintendo thought they needed to use a more english-friendly name for King Koopa and therefore decided to name him after a military tanker used for fueling aircraft and other vehicles, by definition a bowser. While Koopa seems to follow a food-based naming theme that Princess Peach would align with, Bowser is something of an evocative (or even suggestively onomatopoeic) name that features a call to the tough shell of the main boss, his militaristic occupation, and the way in which he doesn’t typically enter the fray until late in the game, but runs support to his Koopa Army throughout.
Some fans have even noted that Bowser looks like a bowl of gukbap and that his fire-breathing ability may relate to the fact that the dish is known for its spiciness.
Koopa is used to refer to the entire species of anthropomorphic turtles in the Mario series including many subspecies. Koopas are known for moving at different speeds based on the color of their shell. As development of Mario titles progressed, Nintendo ran into memory limitations that would force them to make decisions that affected character naming and design. A good example of an innovation that resulted from this impasse was the Koopa subspecies the Koopa Paratroopa.
While designing Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System, the developers wanted a flying character to add diversity to their army of enemies, “but there was not enough space [in terms bytes of memory on the cartridge] to include such a character.” Their solution? Throw some wings on a Koopa and dub it a Paratroopa. Even though Miyamoto didn’t think a turtle with wings would fly with Mario fans, it did and ultimately led to many more subspecies based on the concept and design of the Koopa.
Some early members of the Koopa Army included names that are descriptive, such as Hammer Bros. who throw hammers, Dry Bones who are zombie-like Koopa Troopa skeletons, and Bombshell Koopas who — you guessed it — explode like bombs. Around this time, we see Nintendo beginning to execute a regimented naming architecture for various subspecies, and even starting to build subspecies upon subspecies.
Koopa Paratroopa’s Japanese-language name Patapata is a beautiful onomatopoeia for a flapping sound. It gets the flight idea across, but is a little light on the intimidation factor for an airborne enemy.
Many Mario characters, including enemies, have gone on to enjoy widespread merchandising and pop culture fame. Once Miyamoto and the Nintendo team realized that fans of Mario were receptive to repetitive character motifs and stylized subspecies they they ran with it. This strategy of developing very similar varieties of existing characters saved them space when building the games, streamlined design and naming, and continued to enhance existing sub-brands, or characters, within the Mario universe. One character category with which they did this were the Hammer Bros.
They named different variations of the character based on the projectiles they throw — and they did so with more than 12 subspecies and at least 10 proper-named Hammer Bro characters, including Army Hammer Bro, Hamma Jamma, and a Hammer Bros. quintet called the Pentabros. It’s clear that Nintendo wanted to interject a little humor from time to time while stepping out the architecture for the massive world of enemies they would need to build over three decades.
While there are many other iconic Mario enemies, including Boo, Chomp, Spiny, and Lakitu — all with interesting stories and names to unpack — there is one that is omnipresent like no other: the Goomba. They appear in almost every level of the original Super Mario Bros. — except for the underwater levels and some castles — and have featured in nearly every Mario title since then. Though they are the first enemy a player encounters in Super Mario Bros., they were actually the last enemy created during the development process.
Goombas are a small, brown species of sentient shiitake mushroom with bushy eyebrows and a pair of fangs sprouting from their lower jaw — normal enough — that live in the Mushroom Kingdom — naturally. They were developed as a simple, easy-to-defeat enemy when the Nintendo team realized that the Koopa were maybe too tricky for a preliminary opponent. Therefore, you can usually find them wandering around aimlessly, almost as more of an obstacle than an enemy. So how did this iconic Mario enemy get a name that might circumstantially be taken as a racial slur?
Goomba is derived from “Goombah” or cumpà — the abbreviation of the Neapolitan word compare — which roughly translates to “friend,” “mate,” or “crony” in English. In some contexts it refers to a member of an Italian criminal organization, and while some Italians and Italian-Americans may use the word to describe themselves, it’s important to note that others find it derogatory and offensive. In Japan, Goombas are called Kuribō which loosely translates as “chestnut person” or “chestnut boy,” and were so named due to the early designs looking more like chestnuts than shiitake mushrooms. Which basis of the English name is supposed to take precedent in the minds of the developers and the fans is a bit of a mystery, but either referencing these baseline enemies as mushroom mobsters or a group of mischievous friends could both make sense given the rather scattered family of names that make up the Mario universe.
Per the trend, there are multiple variations of the Goomba, just like the Koopa. You’ll probably notice a few patterns. Goombas have more than 40 subspecies and nearly 30 proper-named characters throughout all Mario titles.
So there you have it, maybe the most important franchise in early video game history built its character naming architecture like a patchwork quilt of food and vegetable terms, Italian names and references, and a multitude of species with descriptive variants that reference abilities, size, gender, and method of combat. Knowing how difficult naming one product can be, nonetheless hundreds of characters, Nintendo’s method of stepping out straightforward character modifications to simplify subsequent naming decisions across various species of characters probably helped to save time and resources in the development process. Once they had a winning formula in the eyes of development teams and gamers alike it made sense to double down on established sub-brands — or in this case subspecies.
Moving on to Destiny, it is important to note some shifts in video game culture in the several decades between its launch and that of Mario’s. Among other things, gamers now have very high expectations. They expect there to be massive amounts of content in their games. They expect the characteristics of that content to be elegant and well-organized so that there is an inherent ease, understanding, and beauty to their experience. They expect there to be meaning and substance to the games they play and the elements therein. Based on financial and participatory buy-in from the gamer community — and more than a few conversations that I’ve had with other players of the game — Destiny does an excellent job of achieving these goals, at least in part, through exceptional naming architecture.
Destiny is a multiplayer first-person shooter — for the uninitiated that means it’s a game where your point of view is that of the protagonist with a weapon of some type (usually a gun) pointing away from you and at an enemy. Destiny offers gamers a chance to play as three different classes of protagonist, which they call Guardians. The three different classes of Guardians you can be are: Hunters, Titans, and Warlocks. The overarching term Guardian works well to unite players as one category or species — in the game, players are usually fighting alongside other Guardians — while the names of the classes speak to what style of character a given gamer wants to control, and thereby how they intend to play the game in terms of tactics.
To Destiny’s credit, all of the classes are named evocatively. Hunters are agile and highly mobile — like hunters (and bounty hunters) historically need to be in real life. Titans are strong and durable (specifically they withstand a lot of damage), but have decreased mobility — implicitly similar to the massive deities of ancient Greek poems. Warlocks enjoy enhanced offensive and special abilities, but are sometimes slower and weaker than the other classes — their name derives from an Old English term for a male practitioner of evil magic so it makes sense that their skills are mage- or sorcerer-like. All of these names seem fairly logical after they’ve been explained once, and are of course reinforced by the characters’ appearances and behavior.
These names seem pretty intuitive: Want to play Destiny as a character that’s powerful and can take a punch? Go with the Titan. Crafty and enchanted? Choose the Warlock. More quick and dexterous? The Hunter is the class for you.
When it comes to enemies, Destiny wisely developed several species with evocative and meaningful names. The enemies in Destiny are mostly all aliens and their five varieties are referred to as races.
The first race of alien that the player encounters is The Fallen. They are an “insectoid race of nomadic pirates” who scavenge various planets for resources. Their name connotes their intergalactic vagrant way of life (“falling” from the sky onto host planets) and tendency to plunder discarded material.
Next up are The Hive, an ancient, undead race of aliens who burrow deep into the Earth and the Moon to create massive underground settlements or “kingdoms.” They move, behave, and attack like swarms of bugs so The Hive is a natural moniker for them. There is even reference made to them worshipping “Worm Gods.”
The Vex are ancient cyborgs who expand their influence by turning their immediate environment into mechanical extensions of themselves. Vex cuts nicely in a phonetic and conceptual way against the more narrative and naturalistic names of the two prior types of enemies. This race’s primary attributes, including transfer portals that allow them to instantly travel through space, the mysterious and unknown metal alloy that they are made of, and the inability of any other type of creature to communicate with them makes them pretty…vexing.
When it comes to character design The Cabal are a fundamentally natural fit for their name. A faction of gigantic amphibians that utilize heavy armor and jet packs to expand their military-industrial empire, The Cabal are perfectly named for a group of people that are by definition united in some close design to promote their interests in an ideology, state, or other community. The Cabal are the most organized and purposeful enemy to that point in the game and their name follows suit.
Finally, The Taken round out the fifth race of enemy aliens that appear within the first installment of Destiny. The Taken are an army of Fallen, Hive, Vex, and Cabal that have been corrupted by an ultra evil enemy character. Basically they are “twisted” versions of the previous regular enemies, who infest specific areas throughout the game. Taken is a perfect term to call out a possessed or transformed character that has been enhanced with new powers and abilities — and generally made more evil. It conveys that the characters have been overwhelmed with a greater evil and that they can turn that intensified evil against the player.
There is an intuitive elegance to the naming of characters in Destiny and it’s evident that the time and energy that went into developing the naming architecture helps the player feel oriented, and contributes to a strong and engaging narrative structure. Without these elements it would be easy for a gamer to get frustrated or bored in this era when a player can change the game they’re playing with the press of a button as opposed to getting off their butt, blowing dust out of a cartridge, and wedging it into a plastic module.
It’s interesting to note that both Mario and Destiny pursued specific and structured naming architecture in completely different ways. While I know there are dozens of more characters to explore in each — not to mention named environments, weapons, character sub-classes, etc. — I think that it’s possible to see a lot of curious relationships between the ad hoc, memory-limitation-induced methods of the Mario series, and the strategic and efficient necessity of Destiny’s naming structures presented here. By giving structurally similar characters names, personalities, activities, and even back stories, they were able to efficiently build words and casts of characters, while keeping gamers engaged and delighted — in some cases even if the characters were nearly identical. Both design teams created a robust cast of characters for players to control and engage with, and both explored naming architecture as a way to enhance that engagement, and create a pleasant and accessible experience.
“The Name of the Game” is a serialized, first-person look at the world of video game naming by Liam Humble of A Hundred Monkeys.
