Its name was divisive and had baffled many when it was first announced, but Wii as a brand soon went on to take over the world.
The late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata had revealed the console’s codename, Revolution, at E3 2004, and it wasn’t until April 2006 that the company announced the final name for their barrier-breaking hit, Wii.
“Wii sounds like ‘we,’ which emphasises this console is for everyone. Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion,” Nintendo explained at the time.
“Wii has a distinctive ‘ii’ spelling that symbolises both the unique controllers and the image of people gathering to play.”
But, it turns out, Nintendo had trademarked the Wii name long before it was ever used. Twitter user taizou_hori has uncovered a trademark application that Nintendo had filed in Taiwan on 2nd July 1997, showing a distinctly green design that’s largely similar to what the logo went on to become.
To put it in perspective, that was filed under a year after the Nintendo 64 first came out, and, obviously, before we even knew anything about the GameCube.
