Dragon Ball Name Puns the Creator Explained Himself

Yomikomi commentary

The monkey plan didn't vanish; it shrank into the tail. For the first volumes, the tail is a gag and a weak spot. Then Raditz arrives in Volume 17, and the tail becomes a clue: Goku is an alien, from a race that turns into giant apes under a full moon. Read backward, the abandoned monkey idea becomes a hidden spine for the whole story, an early design choice that arguably ended up explaining who Goku really is.

Yomikomi commentary

Toriyama said he deliberately avoided a cute name for his heroine and picked something silly that girls would recognize instead. It fits her: Bulma is a genius inventor and heiress who is also vain, bossy and very funny, and a gym-shorts name keeps her from ever becoming a pin-up. The joke gets better as the family grows. Future Trunks, one of the most serious characters in the series, arrives from a ruined future to warn everyone, and he's named after underwear. The naming scheme arguably keeps even the grimmest arc from forgetting that this is a comedy at heart.

Yomikomi commentary

Yamcha's name comes from the same table. Toriyama said it's taken from Chinese cuisine too: yum cha, the custom of drinking tea over dim sum. So the desert bandit and his sidekick arrive as a matched set, a tea meal and a pot of tea. Early Dragon Ball wears its Chinese inspiration openly, from Journey to the West to kung fu, and naming the comic side characters after the most ordinary items on a restaurant table keeps that setting playful rather than grand.

Yomikomi commentary

That touch of silliness is the key. Tenshinhan arrives at the 22nd tournament as a cold, arrogant student of the Crane school, drawn with a third eye, and he's as menacing a rival as the series had produced so far. Naming him after comfort food undercuts that menace before he throws a punch. It also leaves room for what comes next: he breaks with his cruel teacher and becomes one of Goku's most honorable allies. The silly name arguably always suited the good man better than the villain he was introduced as.

Yomikomi commentary

The instrument names outlived the joke. Piccolo's successor, also called Piccolo, starts as Goku's enemy and grows into Gohan's teacher and one of the series' best-loved characters, still carrying a name borrowed from a small flute. The story later even gives the word a meaning in the Namekian language, so the pun becomes part of the world-building. A name chosen to undercut a demon ended up belonging to someone who arguably earns its gentleness.

Yomikomi commentary

Toriyama picked a vegetable pun even though the Saiyans are a fighting race, and the contrast is the point. The arc that introduces them is the series' first truly brutal one, with an invasion from space and heavy losses among Goku's friends. Hiding a grocery list in the invaders' names keeps the author's grin behind the violence. And giving the prince the whole word, vegetable itself, while everyone else gets a single vegetable, is arguably Vegeta's pride summed up in one pun.

Yomikomi commentary

Why a refrigerator? Because Toriyama grouped the names around Freeza as food you keep in one. The one at the top of the food chain is literally the appliance that holds the food, and everyone working under him is a grocery in his cold storage. Toriyama also said that grouping names into themes made it much easier to invent a big cast quickly. That practical shortcut arguably produced one of the neatest hierarchies ever hidden in a pun.

Yomikomi commentary

The Ginyu Force is the series' great comic interlude: elite killers who strike synchronized poses and introduce themselves like a TV hero squad. Their names come from the softest, most harmless food group Toriyama could have chosen, which fits a team that is dangerous and ridiculous at once. Coming just as the Namek arc reaches its darkest stretch, they arguably give the reader a breather without letting the threat disappear.

Yomikomi commentary

It's a surprisingly gentle choice for the race that produced Demon King Piccolo. The Namekians we meet on their home planet are quiet villagers, and the name suits them far better than it ever suited the demon. Slugs and snails are slow, harmless and a little comical, which makes the attack on their villages feel even crueler. The naming arguably tells you whose side the story is on before anyone says a word.

Yomikomi commentary

Cell is the one villain whose name describes how he's built. He's grown from cells collected from Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, Freeza and others, and he absorbs people to reach new forms. The English word also means a small closed room, but Toriyama points only to biology, and biology is the frightening part: Cell is less a person than a process, something that feeds and grows. That's arguably why his arc feels different from Freeza's. You aren't facing a tyrant. You're facing an organism.

Yomikomi commentary

In the film, the magic words turn a pumpkin into a carriage, and transformation is exactly what Boo is about: he changes shape, splits, absorbs others and even changes personality. The names also fit the arc's strange tone. Boo acts like a small child, sulking, playing and throwing tantrums, and his destructive power arrives wrapped in the sound of a nursery spell. Giving the last great villain of the original manga a fairy-tale name is arguably Dragon Ball's final big joke about menace.

Yomikomi commentary

The pun has two layers. Inside the story, Gohan is named after the grandfather who raised Goku, which Toriyama also confirms, so the name is an act of love within the family. Outside the story, it's a word for a meal, and the next generation simply gets another staple food. Goten fits the pattern from a different angle: Toriyama said his name means understanding the heavens, on an even bigger scale than Goku's. In Dragon Ball's family tree, the jokes and the affection arguably grow side by side.