Once Nintendo had decided to hang their little red hat on Mario as the name and face of the franchise, they needed to build out other characters that played well with him. Mario is a classic protagonist and he needs motivation and an enemy. Since the first appearance of Mario his primary motivation has been to reunite with his perpetual love interest, Princess Peach, who is repeatedly captured by his archenemy Bowser.

The princess who evolved out of the concept of the “Lady” character from the original Donkey Kong arcade game has been known variably as Princess Peach or Princess Toadstool in the Japanese- and English-speaking markets, respectively. Peach is an evocative name, as the game designers wanted to give her a sense of sweetness and optimism. The naming style showed a departure from that of the other human characters in play at the time (Mario and Luigi, which are familiar, Italian given names), but it possibly served to make her separate from the hero and his companion — as she would not be a playable character for several years and her primary importance was to personify Mario’s motivation.

Peach vs. Toadstool: Why does a stone fruit princess rule the fungi kingdom? The naming inconsistency arose because she was a princess named Peach ruling over a kingdom of Mushrooms (with “Toads” or toadstool subjects named after the common mushroom). Fair cause for confusion, right? For 11 years she was known as Princess Toadstool everywhere outside of Japan before having her name unified as Princess Peach in Super Mario 64.

Once the world of Mario expanded beyond the scaffolding and barrel-jumping of the Donkey Kong arcade game, it was time to introduce Bowser — a new spikey, fire-breathing, and aggressive archenemy. Bowser is the english name for King Koopa. To understand this name we have to reverse engineer from the lower level Koopa characters that we will meet later. Those characters, and King Koopa in turn, were named for a Korean rice and soup delicacy called gukbap — “Koopa” is the anglicized, phonetic round-trip translation. During development, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, considered naming all of the evil characters in Mario after Korean dishes, but ultimately King Koopa and his Koopa minions were the only ones that went that route.

What’s with Bowser then? Nintendo thought they needed to use a more english-friendly name for King Koopa and therefore decided to name him after a military tanker used for fueling aircraft and other vehicles, by definition a bowser. While Koopa seems to follow a food-based naming theme that Princess Peach would align with, Bowser is something of an evocative (or even suggestively onomatopoeic) name that features a call to the tough shell of the main boss, his militaristic occupation, and the way in which he doesn’t typically enter the fray until late in the game, but runs support to his Koopa Army throughout.

Some fans have even noted that Bowser looks like a bowl of gukbap and that his fire-breathing ability may relate to the fact that the dish is known for its spiciness.

Koopa is used to refer to the entire species of anthropomorphic turtles in the Mario series including many subspecies. Koopas are known for moving at different speeds based on the color of their shell. As development of Mario titles progressed, Nintendo ran into memory limitations that would force them to make decisions that affected character naming and design. A good example of an innovation that resulted from this impasse was the Koopa subspecies the Koopa Paratroopa.

While designing Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System, the developers wanted a flying character to add diversity to their army of enemies, “but there was not enough space [in terms bytes of memory on the cartridge] to include such a character.” Their solution? Throw some wings on a Koopa and dub it a Paratroopa. Even though Miyamoto didn’t think a turtle with wings would fly with Mario fans, it did and ultimately led to many more subspecies based on the concept and design of the Koopa.

Some early members of the Koopa Army included names that are descriptive, such as Hammer Bros. who throw hammers, Dry Bones who are zombie-like Koopa Troopa skeletons, and Bombshell Koopas who — you guessed it — explode like bombs. Around this time, we see Nintendo beginning to execute a regimented naming architecture for various subspecies, and even starting to build subspecies upon subspecies.

Koopa Paratroopa’s Japanese-language name Patapata is a beautiful onomatopoeia for a flapping sound. It gets the flight idea across, but is a little light on the intimidation factor for an airborne enemy.

Many Mario characters, including enemies, have gone on to enjoy widespread merchandising and pop culture fame. Once Miyamoto and the Nintendo team realized that fans of Mario were receptive to repetitive character motifs and stylized subspecies they they ran with it. This strategy of developing very similar varieties of existing characters saved them space when building the games, streamlined design and naming, and continued to enhance existing sub-brands, or characters, within the Mario universe. One character category with which they did this were the Hammer Bros.

They named different variations of the character based on the projectiles they throw — and they did so with more than 12 subspecies and at least 10 proper-named Hammer Bro characters, including Army Hammer Bro, Hamma Jamma, and a Hammer Bros. quintet called the Pentabros. It’s clear that Nintendo wanted to interject a little humor from time to time while stepping out the architecture for the massive world of enemies they would need to build over three decades.

While there are many other iconic Mario enemies, including Boo, Chomp, Spiny, and Lakitu — all with interesting stories and names to unpack — there is one that is omnipresent like no other: the Goomba. They appear in almost every level of the original Super Mario Bros. — except for the underwater levels and some castles — and have featured in nearly every Mario title since then. Though they are the first enemy a player encounters in Super Mario Bros., they were actually the last enemy created during the development process.

Goombas are a small, brown species of sentient shiitake mushroom with bushy eyebrows and a pair of fangs sprouting from their lower jaw — normal enough — that live in the Mushroom Kingdom — naturally. They were developed as a simple, easy-to-defeat enemy when the Nintendo team realized that the Koopa were maybe too tricky for a preliminary opponent. Therefore, you can usually find them wandering around aimlessly, almost as more of an obstacle than an enemy. So how did this iconic Mario enemy get a name that might circumstantially be taken as a racial slur?

Goomba is derived from “Goombah” or cumpà — the abbreviation of the Neapolitan word compare — which roughly translates to “friend,” “mate,” or “crony” in English. In some contexts it refers to a member of an Italian criminal organization, and while some Italians and Italian-Americans may use the word to describe themselves, it’s important to note that others find it derogatory and offensive. In Japan, Goombas are called Kuribō which loosely translates as “chestnut person” or “chestnut boy,” and were so named due to the early designs looking more like chestnuts than shiitake mushrooms. Which basis of the English name is supposed to take precedent in the minds of the developers and the fans is a bit of a mystery, but either referencing these baseline enemies as mushroom mobsters or a group of mischievous friends could both make sense given the rather scattered family of names that make up the Mario universe.

Per the trend, there are multiple variations of the Goomba, just like the Koopa. You’ll probably notice a few patterns. Goombas have more than 40 subspecies and nearly 30 proper-named characters throughout all Mario titles.

So there you have it, maybe the most important franchise in early video game history built its character naming architecture like a patchwork quilt of food and vegetable terms, Italian names and references, and a multitude of species with descriptive variants that reference abilities, size, gender, and method of combat. Knowing how difficult naming one product can be, nonetheless hundreds of characters, Nintendo’s method of stepping out straightforward character modifications to simplify subsequent naming decisions across various species of characters probably helped to save time and resources in the development process. Once they had a winning formula in the eyes of development teams and gamers alike it made sense to double down on established sub-brands — or in this case subspecies.