Sea Hag or Sagahin? A Quick History of an RPG Water Monster
This is the first installment of a series I’ve wanted to do for a while, whether as its own blog or as a podcast, but I’ve decided it’s going to live here. In my head, I was calling it Questing Beast, and it was going to focus on the histories behind recurring JRPG enemies, especially those that show up in unrelated franchises. Now that it’s living here, the first monster I want to explore is the Sahagin, which originated in the lore of Dungeons & Dragons as a sort of monstrous merman, but there’s a lot of surprising cultural history and linguistic shenanigans that played into its creation.
My first encounter with the Sahagin happened in the English translation of the first Final Fantasy, where character limits caused its name to be rendered as Sahag. Lacking any awareness of Dungeons & Dragons back in the day, I read this as an approximation of “sea hag.” It’s not that, but I don’t think I’m the only person who read it that way.
In Final Fantasy IV, there’s a sequence where Edward is mourning his dead fiancee, Anna, and goes outside in the middle of the night to play his harp. His music summons not only the ghost of Anna but also a single enemy that in several English localizations is termed a Water Hag. This is interesting because the town this sequence takes place in, Kaipo, is a desert city situated next to a landlocked oasis and not the sea. I think whoever decided on the name for this enemy also imagined that the name derived from sea hag in some way — and then renamed it to avoid what they thought was a discrepancy. Because what would a sea hag be doing in a landlocked body of water?
Save for one other instance that I’ll explain in the miscellaneous notes section, this family of enemies has been localized as Sahagin in English versions of Final Fantasy games moving forward. In Japan, it’s always been サハギン (Sahagin), with that name being the base off which all variations stem — Desert Sahagin, Sahagin Chief, Sahagin Queen, etc. A similar enough enemy also shows up in the spinoff Secret of Mana games, called a Water Thug in the initial SNES translation but Sahagin in the original Japanese. Although it’s less humanoid-looking and a lot cuter than the creature going by that name in Final Fantasy, it is essentially the same deal: a fish-man walking on two legs and causing trouble.
He says “blorp.”
Considering western conceptions of merfolk and other fishy water spirits, that scene from Final Fantasy IV is actually more meaningful than you might think — and perhaps more meaningful than even the people who created the game intended it to be. By confronting Edward with both a beautiful human woman and also a dangerous fish monster, Final Fantasy IV is splitting the idea of a mermaid into its two halves, one being Anna, a woman, and the other being the Water Hag. The fact that Edward precedes this encounter by performing music plays into the common conception of mermaids singing to sailors to lure them to their doom, even if we might have made that association by confusing or conflating mermaids with sirens, which are famous for their dangerous songs but in Greek mythology were explicitly bird-women, not fish-women. It’s an association that has stuck for centuries, to the point that the Spanish word for “mermaid” is sirena — and the movie The Little Mermaid is known as La Sirenita.
So does the Sahagin have anything to do with sea hags? Apparently not, and I will tell you why not shortly, but also I’m not sure that sea hags are a thing, exactly. There is the Sea Hag character in Popeye comics and cartoons (and I talk about her more in the miscellaneous notes section). There is a Sea Hag creature in Tomb Raider: Chronicles that does, in fact, look like a mermaid with a haggard old woman’s face. And if Ursula from The Little Mermaid is a sea witch, does that mean she’s also a sea hag? (Insert your joke about Ursula being modeled on the drag queen Divine here.) But no, the Sahagins of Final Fantasy were essentially just imported from Dungeons & Dragons, where they have a very different origin story.
The Sahuagin enemy first debuted in Blackmoor, a 1975 supplemental rulebook to Dungeons & Dragons, which terms them “Devil-Man of the Deep.”
From the original text:
A constant threat to man, beast and fish are the voracious SAHUAGIN whose only friends seem to be the equally voracious and predatory Giant Sharks. Although of an intelligence equal to the elves in many respects, the Sahuagin have taken and perverted virtually every aspect of civilization to support their sadistic cannibalistic culture. …
Much about the Sahuagin is probably myth but even if half of what is said about them is true then they are, indeed, a terrible threat. With a huge leech-like mouth, large reptilian eyes, and huge ear-like growths on the side of their heads they have an almost alien appearance. On the upper body are two arm-like extensions that act as forward fins and end in two pincer-like protrusions (opposed to each other) which are used to grasp tools and weapons. The main body is reptilian in nature, covered with thick hide and has a rudimentary tail which is used much like an alligator's tail for steering and propulsion. …
These creatures of evil are usually armed with the trident and the net, the former having a deadly poison on its tip and the latter having hundreds of small hooks set into its fabric. The Sahuagin have become very adept at the use of both these weapons and these weapons also suit their temperament and regular habit.
While this sounds a lot like the Sahagins that show up in Final Fantasy, there’s notably nothing in this description that recalls mermaids or sea hags any kind of feminine sea creatures at all. That’s because the man who created them, Steven K. Marsh, says he got the idea from a wholly different source: an old DC cartoon, according to this 2006 interview. “An old Justice League of America animated show and my own imagination provided the concept,” he says, “with a heavy touch of sea Aztecs and the question what would evolved sharks as a social species be like.”
This is a cool thread to bring into the discussion, but there’s one problem: We’re not clear what cartoon Marsh was actually referring to. There wasn’t a TV series called Justice League until 2001, so it seems likely that he might just meant Super Friends, which ran from 1973-1985 under various permutations. Based on what I can tell, the episode that comes closest to matching what he’s talking about is 1973’s “The Watermen,” which does feature mer-people, but they’re neither as monstrous nor as malevolent as what you might expect. They’re so non-threatening, in fact, that Holo, the male of the pair, is voiced by Frank Welker, sounding more or less exactly like he sounds when he’s voicing Fred on Scooby-Doo.
My best guess for which episode Marsh was probably thinking of was the second installment of The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure, “The Rampaging Reptile-Men,” where the guest baddies are specifically reptile-like and not fish, but they look and function like the creatures Marsh describes nonetheless, even down to the alligator tails. The episode aired in 1967. It’s squarely an Aquaman adventure, without guest characters, but I feel like most of us associate that Filmation style of DC animated show as being Super Friends, without much regard to shows that came before or after.
Then there’s that second part Marsh mentions about the origin having something to do with Aztec culture. In fact, that 2006 interview explains more explicitly where the name came from: “The name is a Spanish name of an historian that came off the back of the ‘Christ in the Americas’ pamphlet used by the LDS Church.”
The man Marsh is referring to is almost certainly Bernardino de Sahagún, a Franciscan friar who was born in Spain in 1499, who traveled to the New World in 1529 and who would probably be very surprised to learn that he’s getting rolled up in all this fish monster business. While living in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (the site of Mexico City today), Sahagún learned the native language, Nahuatl, ostensibly to teach the Aztecs about Christianity. Due to prolonged contact with these potential converts, however, Sahagún came to learn much about their culture and history, compiling what amounts to an anthropological study of them, the most famous manuscript of which is known today as the Florentine Codex.
According to some sources, Sahagún’s work with the Aztecs was controversial because not all Spanish forces saw these people as a population to relate to and interact with so much as one to subdue. After all, it’s easier to justify conquering and colonizing an entire culture by telling yourself that they’re somehow less than you are. Over time, Sahagún allegedly became disillusioned with aspects of the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs. He died in 1590 in what was then called New Spain.
Regarding the history of the Sahuagin, Sahagún’s connection to the Aztec people reminds me of what I wrote in my piece about how Street Fighter II’s Blanka got his name. A major element in that character’s origin story was actually very common in video games of the day: this notion of a foreign person who is purer due to having a deeper connection to nature but who is also primitive to the point of being less human. Blanka is probably the most famous example today, but notable examples in another franchise are the characters of Tam Tam and Cham Cham in the Samurai Shodown series. They’re simultaneously noble and feral, and both hail from a fictional jungle homeland whose aesthetic combines elements from Aztec, Mayan and Incan cultures without much heed to historical or geographical accuracy.
To me, the Sahuagin being inspired by Aztec culture smacks of a similar sentiment because it casts New World people as dangerous because they’re either less evolved or evolved in a way that departs from the norm. Note in the Blackmoor text, they’re described as being as smart as elves but also sadistic cannibals; they have culture, but it’s not the correct kind of culture. That is not unlike how colonizing forces might regard a subjugated people. Linking the the monster species name to Bernardino de Sahagún is ironic, then, because he was one of the Spanish colonists who advocated for the humanity of the Aztecs.
A Sahagin appearing in Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call.
In the end, there’s not much in the design of these monsters to suggest any real world culture; they’re just fishmen, and their greatest lingering tie to anything Aztec is Sahagún’s name. (This is where I would compare the Sahuagin creation story to the way Black Panther: Wakanda Forever re-envisioned Namor’s people as being descended from the Maya, but I haven’t seen the movie yet, and honestly Namor is a Marvel blindspot for me, so I’m not sure I could say anything meaningful. There are comparisons to be made, I’m sure.)
Finally, there is the wildest thread of this story, and that is the connection between Sahagún and the Church of Latter Day Saints, which doesn’t seem to have much bearing on the Sahuagin in Dungeons & Dragons but does explain how Steve Marsh came to learn of this historical figure. Allegedly, a LDS pamphlet made reference to Sahagún, and I was curious to know what that church’s interest would be in a Catholic missionary.
While I can’t say for sure because I couldn’t turn up a copy of the “Christ in the Americas” pamphlet that was apparently circulated in the early ‘70s, the way Sahagún shows up in discussion of Mormon scriptures has to do with a specific prophecy of “great lights in heaven” that cause “a night with no darkness … as if it were day.” In studying these scriptures, some Mormon scholars point toward Sahagún’s Florentine Codex as historical evidence of something like this actually happening. “Ten years before the Spaniards arrived [in Mexico], an omen of evil first appeared in the heavens. It was like a tongue of fire, like a flame, like the light of dawn,” Sahagún writes. “It was there to the east when it thus came forth at midnight; it looked as if day had dawned, day had broken. Later, the sun destroyed it when he rose.” According to this site, the Florentine Codex serves as a historical example of an otherwise supernatural-seeming event described in the Book of Mormon.
So there you go. In the end, I’m just kind of stoked that I got to write a piece that namechecked Final Fantasy, Ursula the Sea Witch, Super Friends and the Book of Mormon. I didn’t foresee this piece going in as many directions as it did.
Miscellaneous Notes
So how are you supposed to pronounce Sahuagin? This apparently comes up often in discussions of this creature’s origin, and the answer depends largely on your preferences, I think. In the 2006 interview, Marsh explains that there are two pronunciations, the first being “like you would in Spanish class,” and the second “sah-ha-gwin.” My guess for how you’d pronounce this word as if it were Spanish would be something like “sah-hwa-GEEN.” Neither of these options has the last syllable being pronounced the way some D&D players do, with a soft “g” — like gin or djinn, and in researching this online I’m seeing that the latter one has given rise to a lot of folk etymologies. It doesn’t really have any bearing on Sahuagins or Sahagins, but the Spanish friar’s last name would be pronounces “sah-a-GOON.”
In my post on how Popeye shaped video games, I pointed out how the recurring villain from those comics, the Sea Hag, appears in the Popeye arcade game and is therefore the first female enemy in a Nintendo game. Given how much Popeye shaped pop culture (and specifically shaped video games in ways that aren’t always obvious), I wouldn’t doubt that this character is one of the reasons other sea hags show up in other franchises. In fact, there is a Sea Hag enemy in Dungeons & Dragons that’s wholly separate from the Sahuagins. But also some interpretations of Grendel’s mother suggest that she is a sort of water hag — strong, feminine, dangerous, monstrous and associated with water, if not the sea specifically.
For what it’s worth, there is also a generic Sea Witch enemy in Final Fantasy III.
Neither sea hag nor Sahagin.
The name Water Hag only shows up in one other Final Fantasy game: as a generic enemy in Mystic Quest. In the Japanese version, this creature is オアンネス or Oannesu, which would seem to be reference to Oannes, a sort of sage-king-god in Mesopotamian mythologies that is sometimes part fish. (It’s complicated.) Which is to say that it wasn’t supposed to be a Sahagin in the original version. I can only guess that the Mystic Quest’s translator, Ted Woolsey, re-used the name Water Hag in Mystic Quest to try to make this game seem of a piece with the previously localized Final Fantasy title. It doesn’t get used again in a western localization, unless I’m mistaken.
I will one day write about Secret of Mana on this site, but since we’re talking about water spirits and worldwide folklore, for now I’m just going to offer up a tidbit about Luka the Water Sage. She’s a relatively minor character in the game, but back in the day when I was a know-it-all little kid, her name was a sticking point for me because it was very similar to the name of an unrelated character in Final Fantasy IV. Only when I got older did I realize that Luka’s localized name was just the two final syllables of her original Japanese name, ルサ・ルカ or Rusa Ruka. And that, in turn, is just the name of the Slavic water spirit rusalka rendered in katakana. None of this, however, accounts how there was a third similarly name Squaresoft character from this era: Lucca from Chrono Trigger. I have no etymological magic to do here. They clearly just liked the name.
If we want to go deep on etymology — and I always do — the name I had in mind back when this might have been a podcast series, Questing Beast, doesn’t mean what you might think. It comes from a story about young King Arthur, where he encounters a monster that has the head of a snake, the body of a leopard, the haunches of a lion and the hooves of a stag. Arthur resolves to kill it, but it eludes him. And you’d be forgiven for thinking that its name comes from the fact that Arthur quests to slay it, but that’s not the case. Questing is a translation of glatisant, a word that in French and Middle English means “barking” or “braying.” So the questing beast is a monster that barks — “like thirty couple hounds questing,” actually. I do wonder whether the name was supposed to be a pun. It sure works like one now. The two senses of the word quest are related, with both going back to the Latin questa, “search, inquiry,” but the sense of barking coming from the idea of that being a noise that dogs when make when they’re hunting down prey. The so-called Blatant Beast in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene is another take on a similar monster concept. On an etymological level, the word blatant, in this sense and the sense of it we use in modern English, means exactly what you’d guess it might: “bleating.” In fact, the word blatant was coined by Spenser in The Faerie Queene.