The fas­ci­nat­ing ety­mol­o­gy behind Guiller­mo del Toro’s char­ac­ter names

When it comes to flesh­ing out char­ac­ters, few film­mak­ers work­ing today can claim to match Guiller­mo del Toro for atten­tion to detail. From birth dates to zodi­ac signs, to favourite foods and even inti­mate secrets, the Mex­i­can writer/​director is known for giv­ing his char­ac­ters rich back­sto­ries; infor­ma­tion that audi­ences are often not privy to.

Take Idris Elba’s Pacif­ic Rim char­ac­ter, Stack­er Pen­te­cost. A gruff but com­pas­sion­ate gen­er­al, Stack­er is a force for good in a world rav­aged by oth­er­world­ly giants. He is a strong leader with a stiff upper lip, almost bor­der­ing on cliché. But what’s in that sur­name? Giv­en del Toro’s Catholic upbring­ing, it is unsur­pris­ing that his films are loaded with reli­gious sym­bol­ism. In the case of the Pen­te­cost fam­i­ly, they are har­bin­gers of a new era for the pre­vi­ous­ly-defunct Jaeger pilot pro­gramme. Sim­i­lar­ly, the holy day of Pen­te­cost, which is part of the Chris­t­ian res­ur­rec­tion cel­e­bra­tion of East­er, sig­nals the end of the holiday’s sea­son along with the birth of a new church.

Pen­te­cost is tra­di­tion­al­ly under­stood as a sto­ry of the Holy Spir­it, which descend­ed down on the Apos­tles in the form of tongues of flame, a ful­fil­ment of prophe­cy. In Acts 2:17 it reads, ​“And in the last days, God says, I will pour out my spir­it upon every sort of flesh, and your sons and your daugh­ters will proph­esy and your young men will see visions and your old men will dream dreams.” Just as well, Stack­er suc­ceeds in reviv­ing the old Jaeger pro­gramme, sav­ing the world, and redeem­ing a tor­tured past that pre­vent­ed him from putting any faith in his legacy.

This sym­bol­ism is rep­re­sent­ed visu­al­ly too. We see Stack­er in flash­backs, lit by a shin­ing sun behind his head. We see him bleed bright red blood, the colour of the Pen­te­costal hol­i­day. We also learn about Stacker’s ter­mi­nal ill­ness due to radi­a­tion expo­sure back when the colos­sal Jaeger robots were built with­out radi­a­tion shields. Inevitably, as with most cin­e­mat­ic heroes of this ilk, Stack­er will have to ensure the suc­cess of his world-sav­ing endeav­our through self-sacrifice.

It is impor­tant to note that the Pen­te­cost fam­i­ly are black. His­tor­i­cal­ly speak­ing, Chris­t­ian sym­bol­ism in film tends to be bestowed upon white char­ac­ters, be they trag­ic or hero­ic. The Pen­te­cost lega­cy con­tin­ues with Stacker’s son, Jake (John Boye­ga), the pro­tag­o­nist of Pacif­ic Rim: Upris­ing. The ety­mol­o­gy of the name Jacob rough­ly trans­lates as ​‘to fol­low’ or ​‘to sup­plant’. Fit­ting, giv­en that the sequel’s premise rests on Jacob liv­ing up to his father’s rep­u­ta­tion, which seems to be met with a mea­sure of reluc­tance based on the avail­able trailers.

This trend is evi­dent across del Toro’s fil­mog­ra­phy. Take the char­ac­ter Ofe­lia from 2006’s Pan’s Labyrinth – the orig­i­nal spelling of the name, Ophe­lia, trans­lates as ​‘to aid’. Ofelia’s entire arc in the film relies upon her sav­ing her unborn broth­er, her sick­ly moth­er, and her own super­nat­ur­al roy­al iden­ti­ty as a princess of the under­world. This fur­ther calls to mind the char­ac­ter of Ophe­lia in Shakespeare’s ​‘Ham­let’. Sim­i­lar­ly trag­ic, Ophe­lia is torn between two sides, just as Ofe­lia is torn between her duty to care for her moth­er and her desire to under­stand the mag­i­cal world around her.

Both are restrict­ed by high­ly polit­i­cal fathers who are both sus­pi­cious and fear­ful of their daugh­ters (as well as lock­ing them in their room). Visu­al­ly, Ofe­lia and Ophe­lia car­ry the sym­bol­ism of flow­ers and death. The queen of Den­mark sprin­kles flow­ers on Ophelia’s cof­fin at her funer­al while a dead tree seen at the end of Pan’s Labyrinth sprouts a flower sim­i­lar to the mag­i­cal one men­tioned ear­li­er in the film.

Then there’s Tom Hiddleston’s Thomas Sharpe in Crim­son Peak, whose first name lit­er­al­ly trans­lates as ​‘twin’. His char­ac­ter has a strong asso­ci­a­tion with Thomas the Apos­tle, who ini­tial­ly doubt­ed the res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus, just as Sharpe both doubts then becomes con­vinced of his love for his new­found wife, plus the ghosts she claims to see. There’s Elisa Espos­i­to (whose sur­name trans­lates as ​‘to place out­side’ or ​‘to expose’) from The Shape of Water, a mute char­ac­ter orphaned as a child and left by a river.

You could take any num­ber of char­ac­ters from del Toro’s films and run wild with the mean­ing­ful pos­si­bil­i­ties of their names. But it’s also true that these char­ac­ters are meant to be seen as they come to life on screen. As del Toro says in his intro­duc­tion to ​‘Hell­boy: The Art of the Movie’, ​“What makes a man a man? A friend of mine once won­dered. Is it his ori­gins? The way he comes to life? I don’t think so. It’s the choic­es he makes. Not how he starts things, but how he decides to end them.”