On the Origins of Chrono Trigger Character Names
This week, I was surprised to learn of Chrono Trigger’s thirtieth anniversary. I vividly remember the day I picked this game up and first popped it in, and my brain can’t quite make sense of the fact that three decades have passed since then. There is probably some irony in me not comprehending the passage of time in the context of a video game that is literally about that very subject. But even more than feeling old, I felt a little embarrassed that in the eighty-some posts I’ve made for this blog, I’ve not devoted a post to this game, which I love very much and which is rich in lore.
So here, then, enjoy my attempt to correct this: a post about the names of the main cast of Chrono Trigger.
On one hand, there shouldn’t be much to be said about the game’s main character. Chrono Trigger is a game about time travel; the title hints at that, more or less, and the main character is also named Chrono. But here’s the thing: In the west, his name isn’t actually Chrono but Crono, thanks to the fact that the game only allows five-letter names for controllable characters. It’s the same problem that for years bedevilled video games from Japan in general and RPGs in particular, in which written Japanese is able to convey more verbal information per unit than the Roman alphabet does, and it affects games on both the macro and micro level. On the former, nuance and extraneous detail can get lost in localized RPG dialogue, and on the latter, something as simple as a name ends up getting truncated into an approximation of what was intended in Japanese.
In any case, his Japanese name, クロノ or Kurono, is a rendering of the English word part chrono-, as in anachronous, chronic, and chronology, itself coming from the Latin version of the Greek khronos (χρόνος), meaning “time,” but we apparently don’t know where the Greek word comes from; it is “of uncertain origin” and will probably remain that way. Importantly, though, as a proper noun, Khrónos (Χρόνος) can also name the Greek mythological personification of time, who is usually (but not always) a different character than Cronus, the leader of the Titans and one of the most famous baby-eaters in all of mythology. So no, in case you ever wondered, Crono from Chrono Trigger is not necessarily named after the guy who ate his kids in an effort to stay in power.
That said, both Chronos and Cronus are often depicted as an old man wielding a scythe, and they helped shape the modern character Father Time. I’d imagine that the scythe was given to Magus as a signature weapon and not Crono, who wields a katana, because we tend to associate that particular implement with a more sinister figure: the Grim Reaper. Cronus (the baby-eater) is associated with scythes and sickles because that’s what he used to cut off the testicles of his father, Uranus, but Chronos (the time guy) and the Grim Reaper carry harvesting scythes to suggest the passage of seasons. Even then, however, Cronus was eventually conflated with the Roman god Saturn, who was the god of time and agriculture, among other things.
Marle’s name is a lot more interesting, I’d say. Back in the day, when gaming mags were previewing Chrono Trigger before any of the names had been localized, writers were looking at the katakana rendering of Marle’s name, マール or Māru, and… making some guesses. I remember seeing it as Mal, Marl, and Marel before Squaresoft decided on the name we know now, the problem with the finalized name being that it’s not obvious how it should be pronounced. I remember calling into the Nintendo Power Line and hearing a pre-recorded bit refer to her as “mar-lee,” and that hadn’t occurred to me as a way to pronounce the name I was seeing onscreen. Honestly, the localization team probably decided on Marle, vague as that spelling might be, because the most obvious spelling would be too associated with Meryl Streep, and that is just not the vibe of Chrono Trigger or this character in particular.
For what it’s worth, a similar issue occurred much later in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, in which there’s a new playable character in Edward’s storyline, a female scholar named who in the localized version is called Harley. Her Japanese name, however, is very close to Marle’s: ハル or Haru. Given the associations we have with the name Harley in the west — Harley Quinn and Harley Davidson — I wish the English version of The After Years had either called her Hal or just kept her name as Haru. All of this is complicated, I suppose, by the fact that Chrono Cross features a character named Harle, though that name is unique to the English version of the game. In Japanese, her name is Tsukuyomi (ツクヨミ), which is also the name of a Shinto moon deity, but her localized name results from the fact that she’s dressed like a harlequin-style jester, suggesting that her name would be pronounced differently than Marle’s.
In the English localization of Chrono Trigger, you soon enough learn that Marle is actually Princess Nadia, escaped from the castle to check out the local fair. When Crono bumps into her, she makes up a name to hide her identity, and there’s no in-universe reason for why she’d pick what she picks. In the original Japanese, however, she’s not Nadia but Mārudia (マールディア), and you can interpret the name Māru (マール) as her almost giving herself away but stopping short of introducing herself with her royal name. What’s more, I think there’s supposed to be some mirroring of her Japanese princess name with that of the kingdom, Guardia, which in Japanese would be Garudia (ガルディア). It’s entirely possible that Marle’s full, noble name is Mārudia Garudia. It’s a real Julia Gulia moment.
Weirdly, Marle is just one of four playable party members in Chrono Trigger going by an assumed name. Only Crono, Ayla and Lucca are going by their given names, and if there’s any significance to this, I’ve never figured it out. It probably doesn’t mean anything.
But speaking of Lucca, what’s most interesting about her name is that Chrono Trigger debuted at time when both Final Fantasy IV and Secret of Mana had been released within recent memory. These games feature characters with names that would seem to be pronounced the more or less the same as Lucca’s: Luca (ルカ or Ruka), the dwarven princess in FFIV, and Luka (abbreviated from ルサ・ルカ or Rusa Ruka) the water sage in Secret of Mana; see my post on Dyluyck for more insight as to the latter’s significance. Lucca’s name is written in katakana slightly differently, as ルッカ or Rukka. That’s also how you’d render the Italian city’s name in Japanese, though I can’t think of a reason why Lucca the character would have any association with Lucca the city.
Technically, Lucca has a surname, because in Chrono Cross she’s referred to as Dr. Ashtear. I assume this was chosen as some tip of the hat to the Frozen Flame artifact that figures into the stories of both Radical Dreamers and Chrono Cross, but I’m curious to see if Chrono Cross remains part of the central canon of Chrono Trigger. With the anniversary announcement promising “various projects that go beyond the world of the game,” I wonder if a proper follow-up to Chrono Trigger will retain the Chrono Cross world-building, given that the reception of that game was never as positive as what met the original. Time will tell, I suppose.
Again, it would seem like there’s not much here. Frog is a frog, after all, and his Japanese name, Kaeru (カエル), just comes from the Japanese word for “frog.” That said, there’s a potential pun that’s missing from the English version of the game, because the soundalike Japanese verbs kaeru (返る), “to return,” and kaeru (変える), “to change,” are both germane to Frog’s story. He was once a human knight who worked for the Guardia royal family — Marle’s ancestors from several centuries previous — but was transformed by Magus into the anthropomorphic frog we all know and love. Frog feels shame, both for failing to defeat Magus and for his inhuman form, and so he exiles himself from the human world. After Frog joins the party, his story is all about redeeming himself, returning to the world left behind and, depending on the choices the player makes, regaining his human form.
There might be a pun in his human name, Glenn, as well. In Japanese, it’s Guren (グレン), and that’s very close to the katakana rendering of the English word green: グリーン. You could view his human name as some kind of foreshadowing of the fact that he’d be transformed into a green frog-man, I suppose. It’s perhaps not a coincidence that just a year after Chrono Trigger’s release, Square would release Tobal No. 1, a fighting game that, like Chrono Trigger, also featured character designs by Akira Toriyama. One of its characters is named Gren Kutz (グリン・ カッツ), and he also wears green. For what it’s worth, Chrono Cross features a character named Glenn, and while he has one of Frog’s special moves, but he’s not supposed to *be* Frog so much as a reference to him, I’m pretty sure.
As you might expect with a robot named Robo, there’s not all that much to say. His name is the least changed of the seven main characters; its Japanese form is just ロボ, literally Robo. And he technically has two other names: his serial number, R-66Y, and Prometheus (プロメテス or Purometesu), the codename given to him by the Mother Brain, the computer system responsible for the robot overthrow of humans in the future.
The significance of his “given” name is pretty obvious. Just as Prometheus in Greek mythology defied the gods in order to give humans the gift of fire — and by extension, the forbidden knowledge needed to advance as a civilization — Robo fights against Mother Brain, making him a traitor but one working for the greater good. It also makes for a nice pair with his robo-girlfriend, Atropos XR (アトロポス145 or Atoroposu 145), who is named for one of the three fates — specifically the one who cuts the thread of life, and if I really wanted to stretch the allusion, I could suggest that her signature item being her ribbon might be an aspect of the mythological Atropos, but I’m pretty sure it’s more just that it exists as part of the video game tradition of slapping a bow on the “default” character model to show you that this one is female. In any case, the non-robot Prometheus and Atropos don’t have any reason to interact, really; it’s just that they’re both pulls from Greek mythology that make them a cute pair.
Incidentally, the location where the party first meets Robo is the Proto Dome. In the Japanese original, however, it’s actually the プロメテドーム or Promete Dome. Ostensibly, it’s named for Robo if not the other way around.
I remember reading Mark Rosa’s list of Squaresoft character name origins back in the day and learning that Chrono Trigger’s sexy cavewoman shares her name with the protagonist of Clan of the Cave Bear, a 1980 fiction novel about prehistoric times that was made into a film starring Daryl Hannah in 1986. While I’m not sure that the Chrono Trigger character was named for the literary one, it would be a remarkable coincidence. In fact, the way the Clan of the Cave Bear character’s name is rendered in katakana is exactly the same as how our video game cavewoman’s name is: エイラ or Eira. I’d always wondered if Ayla’s name was made a pun on the English word era but that would apparently be written as エラ to account for the different vowel sound. Ayla being named after a period of time wouldn’t be unheard of, however; don’t forget that the Chrono Trigger’s airship is named the Epoch, after all, but that only exist in the English version. In Japan, it’s シルバード, which would be something like… Sill Bird? Sylvard? Maybe even Silverado?
In the game, Ayla explains to the rest of the party that the big bad, Lavos, takes his name from a combination of words in her language: la meaning “fire” and vos meaning “big.” This raises more questions than it gives answers, specifically because Ayla apparently speaks a second language besides the one with which she communicates with Crono and the other characters, but by this logic, in the world of the Chrono Trigger, Alya’s name also contains that syllable meaning “fire,” as does the name of Ayla’s rival, Azala, the Reptite queen. It probably doesn’t mean anything, but at least according to this website translating the original Japanese script, the original version of the game offers the same etymology for Lavos’s name.
And then we arrive at Magus, the most interesting character in the game and also the one with the most complicated name history.
Before the heroes set their sights on Lavos, the main antagonist would seem to be Magus, the villain responsible for Frog’s curse and all manner of trouble in the medieval era. His Japanese name, 魔王 or Maō, means “demon king,” and a form of this title that also appears in the the full Japanese names of both Ganon and Bowser, among others. So Magus — from the Latin word for “magician,” more familiar to people not into fantasy stuff as the singular of magi, as in the Three Magi — isn’t a one-for-one translation, but the choice nonetheless works as far as conveying to the characters in the game and the human playing the game that this guy is a badass with gnarly sorcery powers. (Later remakes of Chrono Trigger change the name of Magus’ Castle to Fiendlord’s Keep, so I think fiendlord is the localization crew’s best attempt at a direct translation. It works, but not so much as a character name.)
As you play through the game, however, you eventually discover that a little boy you meet in an earlier era is actually a younger version of this villain character. In the English localization, he’s Janus, named after the two-headed Roman god of gates, time and duality. Given that Chrono Trigger’s plot is kicked off by a time gate opening and given that a major twist revolves around the revelation that Magus is not the villain he was presumed to be, this is a really good localization choice on Ted Woolsey’s part. I say this especially because the Japanese name given to this little boy is ジャキ, which could be transliterated as Jyaki, Jaki or Jacky, and none of these have the right vibe in English. In Japanese, the name sounds close to 邪気, meaning “evil spirit” or "malicious intent,” among other things. In English, it just sounds like a name. And what’s more, the names Magus and Janus share a letter pattern that makes them mirror each other in a way that underscores how they’re actually the same person.
Magus’ story gets complicated by Radical Dreamers, the 1996 visual novel game that takes place in the Chrono Trigger universe and to an extent was remade as Chrono Cross. The three central characters are Serge and Kid, both of whom have counterparts in Chrono Cross, and then Magil, who is a mysterious masked magician with long blue hair. Of course, it’s Magus in disguise, searching for his missing sister, Schala. While Magil does not appear in Chrono Cross, we do get a masked magician with long blue hair, though it’s not Magus in disguise so much has a very Magus-like character meant to evoke the original. (This is a bit of a thing in Chrono Cross, where Leena evokes Marle to an extent, Luccia evokes Lucca, Leah evokes Ayla, and the aforementioned Glenn evokes Frog. Robo is a different matter altogether.)
Not Magus! But a reasonable facsimile thereof, with a little of Jareth the Goblin King thrown in.
In the English localization of the game, this character is named Guile — yes, even though one character already seemingly cornered the market on that name — and that would seem to be a reference to the second syllable in Magil’s name. In Japanese, however, he’s アルフ or Arufu, which could be rendered as Alf and which is seemingly a reference to the tiny purple cat that Janus is seen with in Chrono Trigger. In English, the cat is Alfador. In Japanese, it’s アルファド or Arufado, interpreted as a reference the star Alphard.
Yes, you caught me. Schala is in fact not a playable character in Chrono Trigger. Years before people were pining for a way to revive Aerith, I wished there was a way to get Schala to join the party. Something about her look — and that theme song! — just made it seem impossible that the game wouldn’t allow her more story. Alas, her thread is left hanging in all of the game’s many endings. In the spirit of pointing out when video game localizations override the original Japanese in order to make a change for the better, however, I wanted to point out that I really think Schala’s name makes the character more successful overall. Her Japanese name is サラ or Sara, and just in the way that Jyaki/Jacky doesn’t land quite right in English, naming this mystically empowered character Sara or Sarah somehow just doesn’t seem quite right, even if it would put Schala, who is the daughter of the queen, in line with the many princesses named that or thereabouts in the Final Fantasy games. (Chrono Trigger may not be a Final Fantasy game, but don’t forget that there is a connection that forever links it to Secret of Mana, which was at one point considered as Final Fantasy IV.) The name used in the English version of Chrono Trigger doesn’t mean anything, as far as I know — and if it does, I don’t have any way to guess what it might mean. But despite being an apparent original creation, it works. It sounds special and ethereal and feminine. And that is what Schala is… wherever she is.
Miscellaneous Notes
If you haven’t read Mark Rosa’s “Origins of Character Names in Final Fantasy” document, I strongly suggest you do so. It’s one of the founding texts for this particular branch of video game lore studies. It existing back in the day is one of the reasons this website exists today. Speaking of which… does anybody know the whereabouts of Mark Rosa today?
And finally, I’ve got one for my wanted list: Nortstein Bekkler. What the hell is his deal? And what can we make of his oddly specific name? I looked up what it is in the Japanese version but didn’t learn anything. It’s ノルシュテイン・ベッケラー or Norushutein Bekkerā, so basicaly the same. In fact, all I got about him in general is that in Chrono Cross a mask on the wall of the shop in Marbule looks remarkably like him.
Anyone?
