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Kakarot comes from carrots in English.
Throughout these years it has been possible to see that as Dragon Ball has been adding one character after another, so that one could think that Akira Toriyama will end up running out of names for this. To give an example of this, in the Dragon Ball Super Power Tournament saga, more than ninety new characters were added at once, including sixty fighters, ten gods of destruction, ten angels, ten Kaio Shin, among others.
However, the truth is that the mangaka has a certain trick, since many of his characters have the origin of its name in normal elements. To give an example of this, all Saiyans have the name of vegetables in English, while Bulma’s family has its origin in the different types of underwear. And this is not limited only to the protagonists, since Frieza and all the members of his race come from derivatives of the cold, among others.
Dragon Ball has the novel Journey to the West as original inspiration
Given this, it must be said that Goku has two names in the series, these being the one already mentioned and Kakarotto, derived from Carrot (Carrot in English) the latter. However, we can see that in Akira Toriyama’s drafts, Goku’s original name was another.
And it is not surprising to anyone that the name of Goku and his inspiration comes from Journey to the West, a mythical Chinese novel that features Sun Wukong as one of its protagonists. And it is right here where Goku, as a child, found his base, since in Toriyama’s original sketches, the protagonist of Dragon Ball was completely represented as a monkey.
It is for all this that it can be seen that Son Goku would be the Japanese translation of Sun Wukong, this being where we also find the justification that Goku had a tail and could become Ozaru, although it must be said that in the Chinese novel Sun Wukong never achieved this transformation, being more of a martial arts fighter who achieved immortality. In any case, another proof of the greatness of this novel, which has inspired many current works.
Related topics: dragon ball
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