Final Fantasy creator on how the name came to be
Contrary to popular belief, the “Final Fantasy” name didn’t come about because Square thought it would be its last game in light of supposed financial trouble. Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the series, recently said at an event in Japan that the team instead wanted something that could be abbreviated to FF in English (pronounced as “efu efu” in Japanese).
The original plan was to call the title “Fighting Fantasy”. But since there was a board game using the same name, it was changed to Final Fantasy. Kotaku points out that “Final” was probably a a logical “F” word to pick since it’s a famous word in Japan.
As for those who suggest that Final Fantasy’s name was created as the company’s final project, he said: “Those days definitely seemed like end times, but honestly, any word that started with ‘F’ would’ve been fine.”
