{"id":195,"date":"2000-12-11T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2000-12-11T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/2000\/12\/11\/ask-john-are-anime-characters-named-after-food\/"},"modified":"2000-12-11T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2000-12-11T14:00:00","slug":"ask-john-are-anime-characters-named-after-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/ask-john-are-anime-characters-named-after-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask John: Are Anime Characters Named After Food?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question:<\/strong>
\nI heard that a lot of the characters in Dragonball Z are named after foods like Gohan means “rice” or “cooked rice” and that Kuririn means “chestnut.” Is this true and is there a reason for naming characters after foods and other things?<\/p>\n

Answer:<\/strong>
\nI’m honestly not sure why anime characters are occasionally named after food, but the event is not all that uncommon. Akira Toriyama and Akahori Satoru are the main two creators responsible.<\/p>\n

Many of the character names in Dragonball are based on the names of food. Here are just a few examples.<\/p>\n

Kakaroto (Goku): carrot
\nGohan: cooked rice
\nVegeta: vegetable
\nRaditz: radish
\nLunch: self explanatory
\nGarlic Jr: self explanatory
\nBaata: butter
\nGinyuu: milk (gyunyuu)
\nFreiza: Freezer
\nCooler: self explanatory
\nSangria: an alcoholic drink<\/p>\n

For a longer, more detailed list of the name puns in Dragonball, visit Planet Namek<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Comedy king Akihori Satoru also commonly uses food names for his characters. In Bakuretsu Hunter (Sorcerer Hunters) many of the characters are named after desserts:<\/p>\n

Carrot Glaces
\nChocolate Misu
\nTira Misu
\nTorte, Zaha
\nGateau Mocha<\/p>\n

And in his Lamune & 40 series, which includes the American release Knights of Ramune, many characters are named after drinks, including Lamune (a Japanese soda), Cocoa, Parfait and Milk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question: I heard that a lot of the characters in Dragonball Z are named after foods like Gohan means “rice” or “cooked rice” and that Kuririn means “chestnut.” Is this true and is there a reason for naming characters after foods and other things?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ask-john"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}