Talk:Ganondorf

Potential name origin

Something occurred to me: In Star Fox, Andross's name was originally transliterated (and likely intended to be) "Andolf," but it was changed since that's clearly a play on "Adolf." Anyways, I was thinking perhaps similarly, Ganondorf's name was intended to be "Ganondolf," a possible corruption of "Gandalf." Being a sorcerer, this makes some amount of sense, though it is marred by Gandalf being an unambiguously good character in his own franchise. Either way, it makes more sense than appending the German word/suffix for "village." Doc von Schmeltwick (talk)

"Andorf" (アンドルフ, Andorufu) was most likely supposed to be a play on "Adolf" (アドルフ, Adorufu) and "Android" (アンドロイド, Andoroido) given that he's distinctly named as such in both Star Fox and Star Fox 2 and "Andross" rather just emphasizes the latter - but in regards to Ganondorf, the spelling of his name in katakana is very unusual if it was supposed to be rendered as Ganondorf. A more standard spelling would probably be 「ガノンドーフ」 (Ganondōfu) or 「ガノンドルフ」 (Ganondorufu), but instead, it's 「ガノンドロフ」 (Ganondorofu). According to Data Crystal, it's internally rendered as "Ganondrof" in Ocarina of Time, and as I recall, that's also the case in Ocarina of Time 3D, though I believe most later games render it as "Ganondorf" as of Super Smash Bros. Melee. I've even read one theory that it may have been intended to be "Ganondrov" but regardless, the official transliteration is always either Ganondorf or Ganondrof. It's possible that the game developers had "Gandalf" (ガンダルフ, Gandarufu) in mind when naming him, but if that's the case, why not use 「ガノンドルフ」 (Ganondorufu) instead of 「ガノンドロフ」 (Ganondorofu)? After all, if they can be uncomfortably close to the source name with Andorf, surely they could have done the same with Ganon, and the Japanese version has a direct MC Hammer reference so I doubt they were as mindful of lawsuits back then. LTL (talk) 14:41, 26 January 2020 (UTC)