How did Kirby get his name?

During development the character was Popopo, and the game nearly shipped as Twinkle Popo. When Nintendo took over publishing and aimed the character at Western audiences, HAL asked Nintendo of America for name suggestions. Kirby was chosen from that list of candidates.

The honor story rests on Shigeru Miyamoto's account, first given in a 1993 Japanese interview and repeated since: the name was picked partly in honor of John Kirby, the American lawyer who had defended Nintendo in Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd., the case in which Universal claimed Donkey Kong infringed King Kong. Nintendo won, in 1984, a result that protected the company's future in America. Miyamoto gave a second reason alongside the tribute: the name's harsh, guttural sound contrasted amusingly with the character's cute appearance, against the Japanese habit of giving cute characters soft names.

Nintendo's gratitude to John Kirby is documented beyond the name. The company gave him a $30,000 sailboat named Donkey Kong, with the exclusive worldwide rights to use the Donkey Kong name for boats. He continued to represent Nintendo for years and died in 2019, aged 79; his New York Times obituary records the character naming among the facts of his life.

The honest weight of the record: this is a partly story, and the source himself framed it that way. Kirby was not designed as a portrait of the lawyer, and the name won a list for more than one reason. What is solid is the chain: a list from Nintendo of America, Miyamoto's stated reasons, a real court case, and a sailboat. The Library prints the story at exactly that weight.