Lots of other interesting trivia on that page. I canât believe I never realized Videl is an anagram of Devil.
Itâs same in Poland, piccolo is Szatan serduszko that translates to roughly the same. I think when tv introduced series here it based not original japanese dub, but on french one.
Lol! In Brazilian Portuguese Piccoloâs still piccolo, never hard about coraçãozinho de satan. Bit longer than the original
If I had to take some educated guess:
Studio Novaga (the one behind the Portuguese dub) clearly didnât work with the source material, but instead decided to dub the French dub. (Itâs possible that they didnât have JP/PT translators, but got some FR/PT ones.) The French dub called him âSatan Petit CĹurâ, so gotta translate it literally, âCoraçãozinho de SatĂŁâ, breaking further whatâs already broken.
Digging further on why the French studio went for âSatan Petit CĹurâ, I found this link. Basically, they mightâve found some non-existent pun, associating Pikkoro with both Italian âpiccoloâ (small) and Japanese âĺżâ/âkokoroâ (heart). And then trying to rationalise why the fuck someone clearly evil would be called âheartâ, they plopped some âaaah, heâs Satanâs Heart! Got it!â.
A relevant detail here is that Piccoloâs name only makes sense in the late episodes of the original Dragon Ball, where he was found alongside his children: Tambourine (Tamborim), Drum (Tambor), Piano etc., theyâre all musical instruments. However outside Japan, Dragon Ball Z is far more popular than the original Dragon Ball, and Piccolo appears right off the bat in DBZ, so itâs perfectly possible that they had to translate his name before they had access to the context (his children).
In the meantime: studio Ălamo (the one responsible for the Brazilian dub) identified the naming theme. Since the instrument can be called âflautimâ or âpiccoloâ in Portuguese, they went for a âdonât fix what isnât brokenâ approach and kept his name as Piccolo.
