Non-canonical Fire Emblem names
Credits: King Marth 64 (research)
This page covers English Fire Emblem names and titles mentioned in official/licensed English media, but beyond the context of the original Japanese-only games they come from.
For the purposes of this site, these names are treated as non-canonical and non-officialbecause they often differ between media and some are later overruled--for example in a remake or re-release--in favour of a different name. However, some people might find these names useful, as some are as "official" as you can get, while others are just plain amusing.
Contents
Main Definitions
NOJ: Nintendo of Japan name. From the official site, in-game and/or the game code.
Fan: Fan name. Derived by English Fire Emblem fans. There are other fan names besides the one listed; the fan names listed here are the ones commonly used on this site.
Official: From the North American (NA) or European (EU) version (English language option) of the character/location's debut game.
Non-canonical Sources
List
Note: "Reliability" measures the chance of the names from the source accurately reflecting the names in a possible re-release. However, even for the highest scoring source, this chance is still very low.
The first two sources pre-date the first official English Fire Emblem by many years, so it's unlikely the localisers had any forward-planning when it came to naming. Many of the names here differ from the ones used in the official English version of Shadow Dragon.
| Source | Description | Year | Reliability |
|---|---|---|---|
| N. Power | Nintendo Power, the official Nintendo magazine in North America. | 1996 | ★ |
| Anime | The Mystery of the Emblem original video animation (OVA). | 1998 | ★★ |
| SSBM | Super Smash Bros. Melee, a Nintendo-developed fighting game. | 2001 | ★★★★★ |
| O. Site | The official English Fire Emblem site. | 2003 | ★★★★ |
| SSBB | Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the sequel to Melee. | 2008 | ★★★ |
Nintendo Power
Nintendo Power, the official Nintendo magazine in North America, wrote an infamous article on Genealogy of the Holy War, located here. The article itself acknowledged Nintendo of America, at the time, had no plans for an English release. So even if Nintendo of America agreed with the names, it's unlikely they gave them serious thought.
Fire Emblem Anime
The Mystery of the Emblem original video animation (OVA) closely followed the story of Book 1, but it lasted for two episodes before being cancelled. By some stroke of luck, the OVA was officially released in English, but not published by Nintendo. There were two versions of the OVA--one dubbed with English voices and the other retaining the original Japanese voices, but with English subtitles. Curiously, some of the names differ between the dub and sub.
Note: Only names written in text (for example in the subtitles, credits or the packaging) are included in this chart.
Super Smash Bros. Melee
Super Smash Bros. Melee, a Nintendo-developed fighting game that stars Marth and Roy. It was released before the first official Fire Emblem release and the popularity of Marth and Roy is said to have influenced Nintendo's decision to release the Fire Emblem series overseas. In terms of the names, there are no complaints here really.
Official Site
The official English Fire Emblem site, located here. Has a lot of textual errors in the Path of Radiance section, possibly from a pre-release version? The Japanese-only titles are mentioned in the History of Fire Emblem mini-section.
Additionally, the European official Nintendo site referred to Dark Dragon and Sword of Light as "Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light" here, reflecting the name from Brawl, but also removing the unnecessary "s" in "Dragons" to fit with the remake.
Then, later, the Iwata Asks for Shadow Dragon referred to Dark Dragon and Sword of Light as just "Shadow Dragon", to match the remake's name.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
The sequel to Super Smash Bros. Melee. Features some localisation errors in the Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn content, which brings doubt on the communcation between the localisation teams. The European version of Shadow Dragon follows most of the names here to a tee, but apparently this decision was made by Nintendo of Europe's localisation team, independent of the original American team.
