LttP officially named him Ganondorf Dragmire. Sounds like they were just giving a generic, intimidating European fantasy name. The rest of the early games are that kind of thing, enchanted woods with fairies and knights.
There's not a lot that makes sense in the Zelda theming. Link is officially Christian somehow, at least through LttP. Gerudo Valley is like the Middle East in OoT, which I would say is just loose theming but the Fire Temple has literal Islamic chanting. First few games had King Harkinian of Hyrule which sounds a bit like he's Armenian. The game series is named after author Zelda Fitzgerald.
The Gerudo are pronounced Geld (ゲルド) in Japanese, which is the German word for money. Ganondorf (ガノンドロフ) also has the German word Dorf (village) in it.
This doesn't get us closer to the origin, but speaking of German influence, Link also happens to be a German word. As a noun it shares the same meaning as the English word link.
Zelda seems to come from (ital.) Griselda which supposedly is rooted in the old high German word gris (grau) and hiltja (fight). But that's kind of a stretch.
This went completely off the rails, it's actually kind of funny.
Kind of reminds me of JK Rowling backfilling all of that stuff in the Harry Potter books (now there's Luna Love good!.) Or Nintendo retconning Bowser's sons and replacing them with Bowser Jr.
Sometimes there just isn't that much thought behind a character.
Sometimes? I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure these games were generally not built with a hefty bible full of inviolable lore. Plot and continuity errors are common enough to show that.
Some people are very invested in making sense of things that just don’t have a ton of intention and meaning behind them.
That's not to say that there is a capital C canon that constrains all subsequent installments to be 100% self consistent. They seem to enjoy the freedom of being able to change things to fit their vision for the next installment. I just don't think it's correct to say there's no thought at all put into the head revision of the canon.
Early Nintendo games were sort of like Osamu Tezuka works. There were "actors" that all had the same appearance and sometimes names used across multiple works that filled the role they needed. Of the first five Zelda games only The Legend Of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventures Of Link have a connected story, and even that's questionable as the beginning of Zelda II retcons the ending of The Legend Of Zelda and rewrites the setting extensively.
The argument hinges on Ganon's sprite in the original Legend of Zelda looking like the a monster from Kamen Rider and the skull on Ganon's belt looking like the monster group's symbol.
I don't think either looks similar, at all. I don't get how you can look at a symbol of an eagle entwined with a snake and say, oh yeah, the skull pixel art they made for Zelda? Totally inspired by that. Not just a skull, you know, that symbol traditionally associated with evil. And Ganon looks like some kind of big pig man, not some vague crab-bat hybrid (e.g., he has no claws or wings). It then the article goes on to cite an Iwata Asks episode where the say the inspiration was a pig character from the Journey to the West, so I'm not sure why it's trying to seek some odd alternative explanation.
There's not a lot that makes sense in the Zelda theming. Link is officially Christian somehow, at least through LttP. Gerudo Valley is like the Middle East in OoT, which I would say is just loose theming but the Fire Temple has literal Islamic chanting. First few games had King Harkinian of Hyrule which sounds a bit like he's Armenian. The game series is named after author Zelda Fitzgerald.
This doesn't get us closer to the origin, but speaking of German influence, Link also happens to be a German word. As a noun it shares the same meaning as the English word link.
Zelda seems to come from (ital.) Griselda which supposedly is rooted in the old high German word gris (grau) and hiltja (fight). But that's kind of a stretch.
Kind of reminds me of JK Rowling backfilling all of that stuff in the Harry Potter books (now there's Luna Love good!.) Or Nintendo retconning Bowser's sons and replacing them with Bowser Jr.
Sometimes there just isn't that much thought behind a character.
Some people are very invested in making sense of things that just don’t have a ton of intention and meaning behind them.
https://www.zeldadungeon.net/forum/threads/the-truth-behind-...
https://old.reddit.com/r/truezelda/comments/sejcwx/newly_tra...
https://old.reddit.com/r/zelda/comments/6866wt/addressing_th...
That's not to say that there is a capital C canon that constrains all subsequent installments to be 100% self consistent. They seem to enjoy the freedom of being able to change things to fit their vision for the next installment. I just don't think it's correct to say there's no thought at all put into the head revision of the canon.
I don't think either looks similar, at all. I don't get how you can look at a symbol of an eagle entwined with a snake and say, oh yeah, the skull pixel art they made for Zelda? Totally inspired by that. Not just a skull, you know, that symbol traditionally associated with evil. And Ganon looks like some kind of big pig man, not some vague crab-bat hybrid (e.g., he has no claws or wings). It then the article goes on to cite an Iwata Asks episode where the say the inspiration was a pig character from the Journey to the West, so I'm not sure why it's trying to seek some odd alternative explanation.