paname

What's in a name? Well, in Dragonball the names of the characters are selected to create a pun, or play on words, usually about food, but other inanimate objects have been used. We all know what most of the females' names mean, but what about Pan? Always there is the great mystery of her name.

The first, and most obvious, possibility is that Pan means pan. As in frying pan. This could also come from her grandmother, Son Chichi, having once lived in a castle on Mt. Frying Pan.

The second is that Pan was derived from panes (pronounced pan-es, not pains), a Spanish word meaning flat, round bread that is sometimes made sweetly. It is made sweet on The Day of the Dead, a Spanish holiday were the dead relatives of a family are said to come home for one day and eat with their family. On this day it is called panes de muerto, or the bread of the dead.

The last, and the one I believe, is that Pan is derived from Pan, an ancient greek god. Pan was the god of all that is wild in man, the god of fear and the god of the sheperds. He had the upper body of a man and the lower body of a goat, and was later the basis of the way Satan was interpreted to look like by man. I support this idea because it fits the 'devil' name pun in her family. (Mr. Satan, Videl=Devil)

                  O goat-foot God of
                  Arcady!
                  This modern world is
                  grey and old,
                  And what remains to
                  us of thee?
                  ...

                 Then blow some
                 trumpet loud and free,
                 And give thine oaten
                 pipe away,
                 Ah, leave the hills of
                 Arcady!
                 This modern world
                 hath need of thee!
                               --Oscar Wilde