“Krile? What kind of name is that? And where did Cara and Kururu come from?”

Well, Krile’s original name in Japan was KURURU, back when Final Fantasy V first came out in 1992. When ROMs and Emulators first made appearances some years later, no one knew what Kururu would transate to directly. The closest English name they got was CARA, which is actually close, but not right. It wasn’t until Final Fantasy Anthology came out when we found out what Kururu translated to, and that was KRILE.

Sounds simple, right? Well, not exactly. See, the name Krile may be a extremely close transation of the name Kururu, but it isn’t exact, either. Actually, Kururu transated to our language is KURILE, not Krile. How? There’s actually a group of islands that’s located between Japan and Russia called Kurile. And the Japanese Katakana of Kurile is ‘Ku ru ru’. So, it’s safe to say that Square forgot a ‘U’ in the name Krile when translating the game. But I like the name Krile all the same.

How do you pronounce ‘Krile’? A lot of people seem to think it’s pronounced ‘Kreel’. I myself had pronounced it ‘Kuh-ryel’. But the correct pronunciation is ‘Kuh-rill’, with the ‘rill’ sounding like grill. Mind boggling, huh?

Now I don’t know where the name MAYER came from (probably from the ROM translations), but MAIA is Krile’s official middle name, both in Japanese and in English. At least her last name of BALDESION didn’t change overseas at all.

What’s really something is that Krile perhaps has the most variations in her name. You’ve seen Aeris/Aerith, Terra/Tina, Edward/Gilbert, etc. Well, feast your eyes on Krile/Cara/Kururu Maia/Mayer Baldesion! Another reason which makes Krile such an unique Final Fantasy character, and yet another reason why I like her so much.