Princess Peachs Toadstool Name Was Invented By A Surprising Source

Nintendo's star heroine wasn't always named Princess Peach, and for many years prior to the release of Super Mario 64 went by a different name: Princess Toadstool. Now, fans know the reason why, and it wasn't because of any decision Nintendo made.

In an interview with Time Extension, Nintendo veteran Leslie Swan, who over the course of her nearly three-decade career helped localize countless Nintendo classics, wrote for Nintendo Power magazine, and even voiced Princess Peach in Super Mario 64, spilled the beans on the unlikely origin of the Toadstool moniker. She said in Nintendo's early days, there wasn't a lot of communication between the development teams in Japan and those working on marketing in the US.

"So on Super Mario Bros. they [Nintendo] had outsourced the production of the manual to an ad agency," Swan said. "And the ad agency just kind of created names for things. And so they're the ones who came up with Princess Toadstool as the name for Peach."