NEW YORK — Recently uncovered documents from the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration archive confirmed the long-running rumor that Nintendo mascot Mario changed his name from Jumpman after immigrating to the United States in the 1940s.
“Some dubious records have made their way through the university research circuit for decades,” said Anthony Martin, a professor of history at Columbia University who specializes in Mushroom Kingdom genealogy. “I thought it was all a hoax. Everyone knows that he was credited as ‘Jumpman’ in his first on-screen appearance in Donkey Kong, but this is the first solid evidence we have that it was his real name at one point.”
Mario’s co-star in that first appearance, whose real name is Cranky Kong, says that the “Jumpman” credit was actually a production error.
“He was pissed about that. He told them to credit him as ‘Mario Mario.’ Wanted everyone to think he was Italian for some reason,” said Kong, who claimed that the confusion regarding his own name was caused by an unrelated translation error. “A bunch of the early gaming icons were doing the same thing. Pitfall Harry’s birth name was actually Grubenfall Heinrich, but he came over right after the war. He couldn’t have anyone looking into who was funding all those archeological expeditions, could he?”
A source close to Mario’s family, who asked to be identified only as D, said that some of his relatives were still resentful over the change.
“I know Luigi still holds a grudge over it,” said D, who gave a short interview between tennis sets. “I mean, imagine your brother tells you that your last name is now his first name. It doesn’t even make sense! But Luigi knows whose star he hitched his wagon to. There’s nothing he can really do about it.”
At press time, Mario released a statement denying that he was attempting to obscure his heritage, and that he simply thought “Jumpman” would be difficult for Americans to pronounce.
