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How Super Mario’s Princess fixed her own name more than a decade after her US debut

Princess Toadstool became Princess Peach in an effort to appease Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto

Princess Peach Showtime — Image credit: Nintendo

News by Trent Cannon, Senior Contributing writer

Published on Wed Sep 10 2025

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Today, we all know Mario’s love interest/go-kart buddy as Princess Peach, but fans of a certain age remember when she went by a slightly different name. When players in the West originally set out to find the princess in a different castle, they were questing to rescue Princess Toadstool. The different name came because an ad agency decided to make changes to the text before the original Super Mario Bros., and the new name stuck with American players.

In the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros., the Princess’ name was always Peach. However, when Nintendo of America set about localizing the game for the US, they outsourced the instruction manual to an ad agency. They were the ones who came up with the name Princess Toadstool, which stuck around for years with American releases. Remember, back then, most of the story was confined to the instruction manual thanks to the technical limitations on hardware at the time. So, fans had no way to know that the name change had even taken place.

It wasn’t until Super Mario 64 that Leslie Swan, the localizer who also voiced Princess Peach in the game, came up with a way to bridge the gap between the two names. According to an interview, it was to try to make Shigeru Miyamoto happy.

“So when I went over and I was working on the localization [for Super Mario 64],” she said. “I would sit with Mr. Miyamoto and a translator and they would be going over the changes I had made and I would explain why I was making the changes, and one day, Mr. Miyamoto just said, ‘Is Peach a bad name?’ And I had to tell him, ‘No, but you know she is called Princess Toadstool in the US’. I remember he said, ‘Well, I really like Peach as her name.’ So I came up with the idea to say, ‘Why don’t we call her Princess Peach Toadstool?’ Then we could refer to her informally as Peach.”

That’s why, at the start of the game, the letter that summons Mario to her castle is signed Princess Toadstool, but also features the name Peach signed at the top. After this, Nintendo of America officially adopted the name Peach for the character for future releases.

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