We Don’t Know Where Ganon’s Name Comes From

Because Link, Zelda and Ganon form the triangular foundation upon which the Legend of Zelda series is built, it seems reasonable that they should stand on equal footing. They don’t, of course. After all, we’re nearly forty years into this series and the character for whom it’s named is only now getting her own game. And then there’s Ganon. Despite being a part of the series since it debuted in 1986, he seems even less likely to get a spotlight anytime soon. In fact, for a big bad of a major video game series, we don’t know a lot about him.

The three Triforces are equal, but characters associated with them apparently aren't.

Case in point, if you think like me and enjoy knowing the origins of iconic video game characters: While we know where Link and Zelda get their names, we’ve never been told how Ganon got his.

I was a guest on a recent episode of Retronauts about Ganon, and the set up was “like the one we did about Bowser, but just about Ganon.” However, only one episode was really needed this time, because despite his longevity in one of the most famous video game series ever, there’s not actually all that much to discuss about ol’ pig face. Ganon only appears at the end of the first game, and he’s only a game over screen in the second. He gets fleshed out more in A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker, but from 2002 on, the mainline Zelda games don’t offer that nearly as much insight into who he is or his motivations for villainy. It’s almost as if Nintendo decided to move away from stories that go deep on Ganon, choosing instead to focus on Zelda, as if there’s only so much exposition to go around.

If this doesn't trigger your childhood PTSD, then play the audio clip below.

While I’d like to see more from Ganon in the future, you may have gathered reading this site that I’m also very interested in the past of video games — the early stages, the prehistory and the things from pop culture, world folklore and history that get woven in. Take names, for example. We’ve known for a while that Princess Zelda takes her name from Zelda Fitzgerald. Though series creator Shigeru Miyamoto said so going back to at least to a Majora’s Mask-era Amazon interview, Nintendo’s own Hyrule Historia book, released in 2020, gives a more detailed account of how the wife of the Great Gatsby author ended up being forever linked to a medieval fantasy video game.

I wanted it to be The Legend of Something, but I had a hard time figuring out what that “something” was going to be. That’s when the PR planner said, “Why don’t you make a storybook for this game?” … He suggested an illustrated story where Link rescues a princess who is a timeless beauty with classic appeal, and mentioned, “There’s a famous American author whose wife’s name is Zelda. How about giving that name to the eternal beauty?” I couldn’t really get behind the book idea, but I really liked the name Zelda. I asked him if I could use it, and he said that would be fine. And that’s where the title The Legend of Zelda was born.

And in a 2012 interview with the French website Gamekult, Miyamoto claimed Link’s name came from a gameplay concept that was ultimately abandoned in the first Legend of Zelda game but realized in many later: time travel.

This is a little-known anecdote, but at the time, when we started designing The Legend of Zelda, we imagined that the fragments of the Triforce would actually be electronic chips! It was supposed to be a video game that would take place both in the past and the future. Since the hero was the link between the two, we called him Link. But in the end, Link never went to the future and it remained a heroic fantasy game. We could even say that there was absolutely nothing futuristic about it!

So Link would have been the common factor between two different time periods, which would become a central premise of Ocarina of Time years later, but the origin Miyamoto gives here seems to conflict somewhat with one given previously by Eiji Aonuma, producer of many latter-day Zelda titles. Speaking to 1Up back in 2007, Aonuma states that Link is a link in a more general sense.

When a player is playing a Zelda game, my desire is for the player to truly become Link — that's why we named him Link, so the player is linked to the game and to the experience. Of course, the player can always change Link's name to their own name to further that notion should they want. But if we did give him a voice, that would go against the whole notion of Link being you, because Link's voice should really be your voice.

For what it’s worth, I think both Miyamoto and Aonuma could be correct. Aonuma wasn’t working at Nintendo at the time the first Legend of Zelda was being developed, so this apocryphal-sounding story from Miyamoto could have been true back in the day. As the scratched concepts from the first game faded into memory, the new Nintendo explanation for the name could have become this more general one: Link being the connection between the player and the game.

We don’t have the luxury of any such ambiguity with Ganon’s name. There’s just never been an official, explicit explanation for it, although we at least have a fairly clear idea where the concept and design came from. In a 2009 edition of Iwata Asks timed to promote Spirit Tracks, it was revealed that his original name was Hakkai (八戒), the Japanese name of Zhu Bajie, the pig character from the sixteenth-century Chinese novel Journey to the West. This makes sense, because Ganon’s only in-game form before Ocarina of Time was a pig-man, but also it’s especially notable because it parallels something in the Super Mario games: Bowser’s look was inspired by the Bull Demon King (牛魔王 or Gyūmaō) in Saiyūki, the 1960 anime adaptation of Journey to the West. In fact, that big blue bovine character looks about as much like Ganon as he does like Bowser.

As Retronauts host Bob Mackey points out in the episode, no one participating in the Iwata Asks roundtable thinks to follow up with Miyamoto to find out how or why the original name got replaced with the current one. In fact, if anyone has ever asked Miyamoto or another Nintendo representative this in an interview, it doesn’t seem to have been recorded anywhere that’s readily searchable online. Until someone does, all we’re left with is educated guesses.

At the very least, the origin doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the name as it’s treated in the West. You can find both versions of the name in the real world — Gannon, as it’s spelled in the first game, and Ganon from The Adventure of Link onward — more often as a last name but also as a first name, especially among people of Irish descent. Among the Irish, it’s understood to be a diminutive of fionn, “fair.” However, Ganon the video game villain is not fair in any sense of the word, so I’m assuming this is not what Miyamoto had in mind when he picked this name.

The English instruction manual for A Link to the Past offers a name for Ganon back when he was human, before he was turned into a giant pig monster: Ganondorf Dragmire. It’s never uttered in the game itself EDIT: It is uttered exactly once in the entire game, in the dialogue from the maiden freed from the Misery Mire dungeon. But lore from instruction manuals has an odd habit of becoming in-game canon in the Zelda series. (And I’ll be demonstrating this in my next post, also about a Zelda character, who was born in the backstory but ultimately immigrated into the games.) Ocarina of Time was the first entry in the series to actually show the character in his human form. In fact, he only reveals his giant pig-man form in the final battle, and everyone in the game refers to this form as Ganondorf. Moving forward, this split would be canonical: If human, he’s Ganondorf, and if he’s a pig-man, just Ganon will do. The last name still exists in certain Nintendo materials, but it’s not yet been used in an actual game.

If you're curious about how much the English localization for A Link to the Past added atop the Japanese original, this site has some interesting comparison. Spoiler: It's lots!

So where does the dorf come from? Well, if you assume that it’s the same word part that you see in German, then it means “village.” (Düsseldorf, for example, is the village on the Düssel river. Waldorf, as in the hotel or the salad of the Muppet, is the village in the forest, wald being the German word for “forest.”) But in the same way that Ganon doesn’t seem to reflect what the Irish etymology would have you expect, I’m not sure this is particularly meaningful, even if some people posting online will bend themselves into a linguistic pretzel to make sense of the “village” association. I think it’s more meaningful to point out that another Nintendo franchise has a villain with a very similar name, at least in Japanese. The big bad in Star Fox is known as Andross in English and Andorf (アンドルフ, Andorufu) in Japanese. It’s not exactly the same katakana, as Ganondorf’s name is rendered as ガノンドロフ, Ganondorofu, but they’re very similar and the final syllables are rendered identically in English, even if the Star Fox localization team seems to have made the effort to push its big bad’s name in a different direction.

Given that A Link to the Past debuted in November 1991 and Star Fox in February 1993, it’s possible the similar names might be more than a coincidence, either because of internal Nintendo of Japan chitchat or because of something bigger. On a Japanese site tracking the origin of Zelda character names, it’s posited that the dorf part shows up in the names of villainous characters, and I was still wondering what the connection might be when I recorded the episode. It’s actually another guest on the episode, Diamond Feit, who points out that there’s a third murderous megalomaniac who also famously has that word part in his name: Adolf Hitler, whose first name would be rendered in katakana as アドルフ, Adorufu. I’m not saying this is definitely the reason, but it does seem like a very obvious explanation once you consider what Hitler, Ganondorf and Andross have in common. After all, English-speaking places don’t really use the name Adolf post-World War II, just because the associations with that name are still so great. I suppose it’s possible that Japanese could have interpreted the name similarly, but I couldn’t think of another example from pop culture. Can you?

This is as far as I can take the history of Ganon’s name, and unless I missed something major, as far as video game historians have been able to take the matter. So I will conclude with this request: If you somehow manage to stumble into a conversation with Shigeru Miyamoto at some point in the future, could you please ask him? Even if you’re being paid to ask about something else, throw this in as a fun aside, noting that the world needs to know — and if not the world, then for sure one guy living in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, do check out the Retronauts Ganon episode, which features me, Diamond Feit and Kevin Bunch discussing ol’ pigface with Bob Mackey. It’s only available to those subscribing to the show’s Patreon feed at the $5 a month level, but if you love in-depth discussions of old video games, pigman-featuring or not, it’s well worth the $60 a year.

Miscellaneous Notes

If you read my opening paragraph and wanted to point out that Zelda technically got her own game in the 1993 CD-i title Zelda: Wand of Gamelon, please note that it does not count, for reasons that don’t need explaining. I was, however, very surprised to learn that three years later there was a third CD-i game, Zelda’s Adventure, done more in the overhead style than in the Zelda II style of Wand of Gamelon. It was only released in Europe. It also doesn’t count for reasons that don’t need explaining, but I was surprised that I hadn’t heard of it before now, especially considering the infamy enjoyed by the other two.

If I were pressed to offer a theory for where Ganon’s name comes from, I might point to the fact that one of the largest companies in Japan has a similar name: Canon, the camera company, which takes its name from a figure from Buddhist tradition. Originally named Seikikōgaku kenkyūsho (精機光学研究所, “Precision Optical Laboratory”), the company in 1933 developed a prototype camera called Kwanon, the name coming from the bodhisattva Guanyin, a female figure associated with compassion.

A popular Chinese representation of Guanyin gives her a thousand arms, and this branding image for the camera reflects that. (Via.)

In 1947, the company changed its name to the Canon Camera Company, that name coming from the English word canon but chosen because it closely resembled the Japanese name for Guanyin. If any of this is ringing a bell with you even though you’re not up on your bodhisattvas, it might be because the same figure inspired the name of the X-Men character Kwannon, who’s all tied up with Psylocke in the complicated ways that only Marvel characters are capable. (Connor Goldsmith’s Cerebro podcast explains the character’s origins in depth.) Notably, Kwannon’s name is pronounced in a way that’s not intuitive given that spelling: It’s more properly pronounced “KHAN-own,” and the spelling reflects a “pre-modern” pronunciation of the Chinese name in Japanese. (Today, it would be more likely to render her name to reflect the Japanese pronunciation as Kannon or Kan’on.) Granted, a female bodhisattva doesn’t have a whole lot in common with Zelda’s big bad, but then again neither does a Japanese assassin who gets body swapped with Betsy Braddock. I just can’t think of anything that’s pronounced more or less like Ganon’s name would have left a strong impression on Miyamoto back when Legend of Zelda was being developed.

In looking around online to see how other people have been speculating about the origins of Ganon, I found a reddit thread that attempts to link Ganondorf’s design back to Saiyūki and Journey to the West. The Saiyūki version of the character Sha Wujing is Sa Gojō, a man-eating ogre who first fights the heroes before deciding to join their party. To me, this character design looks a little bit like Ganondorf, in that both seem like unflattering caricatures of certain ethnicities you might find living in desert regions to the point that I don’t think these designs would be approved today. 

If anything, the movie design reminds me more of the lankier Moblins in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. (Moblins, it should be noted, were originally more bulldog-like in their design, but have looked more like pigs and therefore more Ganon-like starting in A Link to the Past.) However, Ganon is associated with the desert, going back to the A Link to the Past instruction manual, where it’s first mentioned that he’s associated with a band of thieves. Ocarina of Time leaned much further into this, identifying Ganon for the first time with the Gerudo, a desert-dwelling people that is almost entirely female. Depending on the game, the Gerudo appear to be inspired by a number of real-life cultures living in arid lands in Western Asia. The Gerudo and Ganondorf’s association with them has recurred in every subsequent mainline Zelda title, if sometimes referenced offhandedly in games like The Wind Waker.

The Reddit poster goes on to list other connections between Ganondorf and not just Sa Gojō but his counterpart in Journey to the West, Sha Wujing, and one of them is how the original text describes his ogre form.

Not really blue,
Not really black,
With an evil face;
Neither tall, 
Nor short, 
Bare legs and a muscular body.
His eyes flashed like a pair of tortoiseshell lanterns;
The corners of his mouth were as sinister
As a butcher's cauldron.
Protruding fangs like swords,
Red hair, matted and unkempt.
He roared like a clap of thunder,
And ran across the waves with the speed of wind.

It does sound somewhat like Ganon, although it’s not a perfect fit.

For what it’s worth, Guanyin is a character who appears in Journey to the West, and yes, Kan’on appears in Saiyūki. But again, aside from the similarity of their names, there’s literally nothing about her to link her to Ganon. If anything, she’s the opposite of Ganon.

According to this 1999 interview with Ocarina of Time character designer Satoshi Takizawa, who created Ganondorf, the Highlander actor Christopher Lambert was one of the original design influences for the character, though Takizawa admits that what ended up in the game differs substantially from that. That said, both Ganondorf and Lambert have prominent noses, at the very least. Another interesting pop culture connection I learned just recently, however, is that Steven Universe creator Rebecca Sugar noted that the Ocarina of Time design element of the Gerudo wearing gems on their faces ended up inspiring a similar design element in the Crystal Gems on that series. Of the three main Crystal Gems, the only one with a stone displayed on her face is Pearl, and as it turns out, Pearl also has a prominent nose. 

Strong noses make for strong fighters.

It’d never considered any connection between Ganondorf and Pearl before learning this, but here you go.

Alongside introducing the last name Dragmire, the English version of the instruction manual for A Link to the Past also proposes that another name for Ganon’s pre-pig form was Mandrag Ganon, which allegedly, apparently means “Ganon of the Enchanted Thieves.” Not only has this not surfaced in a canonical way, I have no idea where the Nintendo of America localization team got that name Mandrag or why it means what the text says it means. The original Japanese text mentions neither the last name nor the nickname.

The trouble with trying to read meaning into creative choices made by people you can’t just interview is that it’s tempting to decide that something seems right even when you don’t have any evidence to back it up. For example, a longstanding explanation for Link’s name was that it came from the German word for “left,” links, because Link has long been depicted as lefthanded. That just was not the case, it turns out — and then regardless, Link stopped being lefthanded starting in Skyward Sword and continues to be rightanded in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, even if he’s still a lefty in A Link Between Worlds and the upcoming Echoes of Wisdom. (Where’s your timeline on this, Nintendo?) Similarly, it seems logical that Zelda’s name might have some relation to the word delta, given the triangular associations and the importance of that shape to this series, but it’s apparently another coincidence, even if they’re rendered similarly in katakana, デルタ and ゼルダ.

I was thinking of putting together a sort of Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games wanted list — a post where I gather together some of the video game names and terms that seem to defy explanation. Ganon, obviously, would be at the top of the list, but I would also include mysteries like Lakitu, the -ara, -aga, -aja spell suffixes from Final Fantasy and more. As Kate Willaert pointed out on Twitter some time ago, we don’t even know how the term “1-up” came to mean what it means today. I, for one, would love to get to the bottom of stuff like this.