As someone who speaks Japanese as a second language, I find this linguistically dubious - "puck" as an Anglicization of "paku-paku" doesn't make a lot of sense. My guess is that this is a joke the writer came up with, similar to "Fook Mi" in Austin Powers.

Maybe it's just a commonn urban legend and the movie is referencing that urban legend, like Mew being under a truck. It's Canada, who knows?

@EthanKaminski That fact is being discussed here. :)

@EthanKaminski: Well, at least for the English to Japanese direction, English "short u" corresponding to Japanse "short a" is unremarkable and a well-established correspondence. Of course Japanese loanwords in English usually use Hepburn romanization but it's not that surprising to me if a game name used reverse "Japanese-ization" instead.

@EthanKaminski Compare "Datsun" for ダットサン.

The creator of Pac Man explicitly verified this as a fact in a 2010 Wired interview: "Wired.com: And of course, the game was originally called Puck-Man, but the name was changed for America because someone might vandalize the “P” and turn it into an “F.” Iwatani: Yes, the U.S. subsidiary said that that would be bad. We wondered, what should we do? And decided to change it to “Pac.”" - The precise origin (Paku-paku etc.) doesn't really matter as related to the question here, it was changed from Puck to Pac for offensiveness reasons.

@EthanKaminski: The Japanese name is 「パックマン」(pakkuman), which is literally the English words "Puck Man" written in katakana. It's a pun, because「パック」(pakku) sounds similar to 「ぱく」(paku).

@TRiG: xDaizu beat you to it :)

@BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft It'd be more like "Pock Man" or "Pahk Man", considering how the kana パ is pronounced. パ is used for "pah" sounds.

@mbomb007: パ is also used for [pʌ] "puh" sounds when transliterating English to Japanese. Multiple English words frequently transliterate to the same Japanese because Japanese has fewer sounds (ex. 「 スタッフ 」"sutaffu" is the correct transliteration for both "staff" and "stuff"). BTW "Pock man" would be 「ポックマン」"pokkuman" - yes I'm aware the English vowel sounds more like パ, but I did not make the rules.

That's what I'm saying. Japanese has fewer sounds and the mapping is not one-to-one. So you can't look at the Japanese and say what the English would be when more than one would map to it. Also, transliteration is based on pronunciation, not spelling. You can't rely on a website like this to always give a correct result. But doing "pacman" does give「パクマン」.

I forgot the hyphen. "Pac-man" produces the correct result. sljfaq.org/cgi/e2k.cgi?word=pac-man

@mbomb007: Katakana transcription is based on both spelling and pronunciation (also I am not using a random website. I speak a fair amount of Japanese, though I'm by no means fluent). What I am saying is that the name was chosen in English first, not Japanese, because the transliterated name was a clever pun (this is backed by the skeptics link). When they learned they needed to change the name for the English market, they (cleverly) chose a different English "word" that transliterates to the same thing.

@BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft: The conventions for kana-ization of English words are based on various English accents, not just one (as well as, as you say, English spelling). The British English "short o" sound is in fact probably closer to the sound in Japanese ポ than the sound in Japanese パ.

@xDaizu Unexpected Skeptics rep cap for the win. high five

Well I'll be! Very neat, did not expect that :). +1; wish I could give you more for putting in the effort of getting that verified.

@EthanKaminski also in the languages formerly known as Serbo-Croatian, the short u is transliterated as short a, as in Donald Tramp (for example, see blic.rs/donald-tramp; some Latin-alphabet news outlets retain English spellings while others such as this one transliterate).

What does the image add to the answer? It's a still from a movie. And... it looks pretty?

@Mari-LouA ...I think it adds tone. 1) Literally the whole answer is a quote from a movie (nothing added or emphasized by me) so it seemed kinda appropiate to add the still to underscore that. 2) It's a beautiful still [citation needed] 3) As a newcomer I felt kinda awkward and insecure sharing this random geek trivia, kinda like Scott; and I imagined the rest of the community looking at me like Ramona does in that still. So... yeah, mainly tone. If the community agrees it's better off without it, it could be edited out.

Well, reason #3 makes it clearer to me why you posted the image, and the idea of the community looking at your first post as the girl from the movie, is charming. But next time, the image shouldn't just complement an answer, it should illustrate and clarify meaning, especially if there is an issue of ambiguity.