Q&A: Pac-Man Creator Reflects on 30 Years of Dot-Eating | GameLife | Wired.com

Bugger. Apparently, I’m wrong. Betrayed by my Japanese friends.

Pac-man was originally called ‘Puck-man’. It’s logical that a game about eating should be called Pac-man, based on the Japanese words for ‘nom-nom’ (pakka-pakka).

Unfortunately, it’s also logical that those clever Japanese games designers at Namco would want to make a game that appealed to the biggest games market on the planet.