(WARNING, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE MANGA, POST-CANON AND EXTRA MATERIALS HERE!!!)
Delicious in Dungeon or Dungeon Meshi is a Japanese fantasy manga by Ryoko Kui that takes place in a early medieval-style world with geography, history, and culture based on elements from our real world, but creatively remixed and reimagined to create something completely new, while still utilizing familiar elements.
While reading Dungeon Meshi, I often found myself looking things up, such as mythology, food, character and place names, and I found so much interesting information that I had to start compiling it just to keep track of everything. Eventually my document grew so large (150+ pages!) that I decided I needed to organize it so I could share it with other fans.
When you take all the information Kui gives us together as a whole, there are clear patterns in where the cultural tidbits and character names come from both in the real world, and where Kui places them in the Dungeon Meshi world. I believe Kui is using this information to help flesh out her already deep and complex world.
So I think by studying the characters' names, the food, and clothing, we can learn new things about the world of Dungeon Meshi, and all the characters in it!
Obviously it’s impossible to know whether Kui picked all of these names with this intent, but considering how consistently my research lines up with who the characters (and places and objects) are, I think it’s likely that it is purposeful. There’s no way all of these could have just been picked by luck and coincidence.
It’s important to note that the information I’m sharing in this paper being factually true doesn’t actually matter, what matters is if the information (true or false) is something you can find on the internet and in books, and if Kui could have plausibly seen it.
Kui isn’t omniscient, she only has access to the same internet and books that the rest of us do, so when she was researching cultures and names, what information did she find? Even if it was a completely wrong entry on wikipedia, she could have believed it was true, or she could choose to use wrong information simply because she wanted to. She is writing fiction after all, not a textbook, and she doesn’t have any obligation to be an accurate source of information.
Keep in mind that Ryoko Kui is a huge fan of western fantasy, and is knowledgeable about world history and mythology. It’s likely that she speaks at least a bit of multiple languages, including English.
Aside from the manga itself, a lot of the information mentioned in this essay comes from The Adventurer's Bible: The Delicious in Dungeon World Guide which was published in 2021, the complete edition which was published in 2024, the Daydream Hour series (which was collected into a book in 2024 but started releasing periodically from 2016-2022) and a lot of sketches and comics Kui posted to her blog.
If you have a question about something I cite, don’t hesitate to ask me about it! Right now there is no good central repository of all the information, but you can try searching for Dungeon Meshi discord servers (people there may have the extra materials saved) and the Dungeon Meshi Reddit community where some fan-translations have been posted.
The first three chapters of this essay are focused on real world historic and cultural references in the world of Dungeon Meshi in general. I discuss the setting, time period, languages, gender and religion.
After that, I discuss individual characters, divided by their race, followed by cultural or family affiliation. The order is: tall-men (Northern, Merini, Eastern Archipelago, Miscellaneous), half-foots, dwarves, gnomes, orcs, and elves.
Fionil and Marcille are both half-elves, but Fionil was raised in the West, and Marcille was raised in the North, and so I’ve grouped them with the Western elves and the Northern tall-men respectively. Thistle is with the tall-men of Merini for the same reason. I’ve put Kuro after Mickbell because there’s no other named kobolds and the two characters are connected, and Kiki and Kaka are with their adopted parents in the gnome section.
I’m not a linguist, I only speak two languages fluently, and I’m also not a historian or a religious scholar, just someone who is passionate about these subjects. I’ve tried my best to double check the information I share in this essay, and make it clear when I think something I mention in this essay might not be true.
But also please remember, information presented in this essay doesn’t need to be true, it just needs to be written down somewhere that Ryoko Kui might have found it (a book, the internet) and decided to use it while she wrote Dungeon Meshi.
But if I’ve gotten anything egregiously wrong, or you have any interesting info to share, please leave a comment or send me a message, I’d love to hear from you! I can’t promise I’ll keep updating this document as time goes on, but I may add more information if it becomes available and I have time.
Due to the phonetic way Japanese renders non-Japanese words and names, you may have seen different spellings in different translations of Dungeon Meshi.
There’s a couple of reasons for this, one is the ways that the Japanese language works: The R/L sounds are often swapped, the TH sound doesn’t exist and is usually replaced with an S or Z, F and H are often swapped, and Japanese needs to insert vowels anywhere two consonants come together, or when a consonant comes at the end of a word, unless it’s N. So when writing a foreign word in Japanese, dragon becomes doragon, blueberry becomes buruberi, internet becomes intanetto, etc.
The other reason for different name spellings is that until Ryoko Kui confirmed how she intended the names to be spelled in Latin letters, translators had to make their best guess based on what the name sounded like in Japanese, and also based on how many obscure names they were familiar with.
For example, if they didn’t know Marcille and Laios were real names, they could have easily translated them as Marushiru/Malshil and Raios and assumed Kui just made them up. The other example of this is Sissel/Thistle, since English translators didn’t realize “Sisseru” was supposed to be the English word “Thistle”. They assumed “Sisseru” was a made-up fantasy name until Ryoko Kui said it was Thistle.
I’ll go with Ryoko Kui’s official spellings first, Yen Press’ translation second if Kui's preference isn’t known, and alternative spellings last.
Delicious in Dungeon was an English title picked by Ryoko Kui’s editor. Many fans have complained long and hard about this title, since Dungeon Meshi literally just means “Dungeon Meal” which is an accurate description of what the series is about, but “Delicious in Dungeon” doesn’t really make sense in English.
I’ll mostly refer to the series as Dungeon Meshi throughout this essay because it’s shorter.
When the characters in the manga talk about dungeons, in Japanese they are actually using the word 迷宮 (meikyū) which means labyrinth. The connotation based on the kanji used is a palace or castle with many confusing rooms. The word “dungeon” (ダンジョン, danjon) is only every used in the manga’s title, when the narrator of the manga is referring to the title, or when Kui discusses dungoniums (ダンジョニウム/Danjoniumu) which she describes in the world guide as miniature dungeons, built to emulate a labyrinth.
The English loan word “dungeon” is most likely intended to catch Japanese reader’s eyes because it is foreign and exotic, and lead them into a false sense of security because of the Japanese pop culture perception of “dungeon” as a relatively harmless place where characters have formulaic adventures and gather resources as part of a game, or a game-like story.
“Dungeons” in Japanese pop culture can be sinister, but they have come to mean something as innocuous as “level” or “environment.” The early story of Dungeon Meshi is lighthearted and full of comedy, which reinforces this idea and leads readers to believe that the labyrinth in the story is just a generic backdrop with little inherent importance, like it is in many fantasy stories. However, Kui repeatedly suggests the labyrinth is not benign, that it is itself a monster and that anyone foolish enough to go into it is at risk of becoming food, and being devoured.
Before the word dungeon came to generically mean “place to exploit for resources” in fantasy fiction and gaming, its primary meaning was prison. So then the title “Dungeon Meshi” actually means “prison meal.” But who or what does the prison in Dungeon Meshi contain? Of all the people in the dungeon, who are the prisoners? And what does a “prison meal” really mean? A meal eaten by prisoners? A meal cooked by prisoners? A meal cooked using prisoners as ingredients? All of these meanings are implied and hinted at in the manga.
The characters in the story call the dungeon a labyrinth, which is a word that means a maze-like prison, specifically one that traps innocent young people and a man-eating monster inside. Both the monster and its food, the people, are prisoners… But which of them will die and be eaten? Who will escape the labyrinth in the end, and what will it cost them?
You’ll have to read Dungeon Meshi to find out!
For the sake of simplicity, and because many translations use the word dungeon and the word dungeon is in the manga’s title, I will use the word dungeon in this essay.
I may write another paper in the future with further analysis of the themes of Dungeon Meshi, including the significance of the word labyrinth in the original Japanese. In this paper, I’ll address the topic again in Chapter 12, Elven Culture.
Some translations of Dungeon Meshi have used the word “mana” to describe magic, when the original Japanese simply said magic (魔法) or magical power (魔力).
In pop culture, and especially fantasy games, mana is a word often used to describe and measure magical power as an expendable resource. The word mana comes from Maori and its earlier Proto-Oceanic ancestor, and it describes a form of supernatural power tied to social status, respect and strength.
Ryoko Kui does not appear to use the word mana (マナ) at any point in the manga, the published extra materials, or her blog, so calling magic “mana” is an addition made in only in some translations, so I will be disregarding it in my linguistic cultural analysis, as I do not believe it was a part of Kui’s authorial intent.
Using the word mana in my analysis would skew my interpretation towards giving Austronesian cultures more importance in Kui’s world building than I think she intended. See the orc and elf sections (Chapters 11 and 12) of this essay for more information about the elements of Austronesian culture that are actually present in Dungeon Meshi.
Some names or words come from languages that don’t use the Latin alphabet, and therefore they have been transliterated into Japanese, and then transliterated into the Latin alphabet, which introduces multiple possible spellings and potential for errors.
Also, the most popular way to transliterate languages changes over time, so a name might have been spelled one way in English ten years ago, and now the “correct” way to transliterate it may be something different. This means the age of whatever sources Kui was using impacts the spelling as well. Is she searching the internet? Is she reading actual physical books? When were those books written? What language is she reading in? Did she pick an older or a newer spelling because she liked how it looked better?
Throughout this essay, I will be referencing names and words from many different languages. Some of the text may not render correctly on all computers or mobile devices.
In my attempts to discern deeper meaning, if I can’t find anything for the name as it is written in English, I look for names and words that sound similar (since katakana is a phonetic description of sounds), and also break names and words down into their component parts.
Japanese uses a combination of three writing systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Generally hiragana is used for native Japanese words and grammatical elements, katakana is used for foreign words and onomatopoeic words, and kanji is used for Japanese names and proper nouns.
Kanji are a Japanese logographic script that comes from Chinese script. They have Japanese pronunciations and sometimes mean different things from what they originally meant in Chinese. There are many different kanji that produce the same sounds, but have different meanings, so Japanese names often have multiple possible meanings, even though the name spoken aloud sounds the same.
Parents spend a lot of time making sure their kids have nice kanji for their name, and most Japanese authors do the same thing for their characters! Deciphering details and hints about fictional characters based on what kanji the author used for their names is common among Japanese readers.
However, even though Dungeon Meshi is a Japanese manga for adults, most of the character’s names are non-Japanese and so they are written in katakana. This is normal for characters with non-Japanese names, but unusual for characters who have Japanese names.
I think Kui does this because by writing even traditional Japanese names with katakana, she reminds her readers that when the characters are saying Japanese names, they aren’t actually speaking Japanese, but some other foreign language, which occasionally has Japanese words in it.
It’s common for manga and anime to give characters meaningful names. Japanese culture is very fond of wordplay, puns and name interpretation.
One well-known example in the West is Sailor Moon, with names like Minako Aino, which can be read as Beautiful Child of Love, because she represents the planet Venus, which is the Roman goddess of love. Obviously this sort of thing happens in non-Japanese media too, Nomi Mallone in Showgirls wants to be famous (Nomi = Know Me) and she is alone (Mallone = I’m Alone), but it’s not as ubiquitous.
A lot of Japanese media will also give characters names that are words taken from other languages because it sounds cool to Japanese readers, or it’s a joke. Examples are Shampoo, Cologne, and Mousse from Ranma ½ (they’re all beauty products) and Bulma, Trunks, and Pan from Dragon Ball (they’re all types of underwear). In the Gundam franchise, which is about the evils of war, a character named Lockon is a sniper, Ribbons is a manipulator, but there’s also characters with strange names like Bring Stabity, South Burning, Healing Care, Anew Retuner, Quattro Bajeena, Megafauna, and Descartes Shaman.
Dungeon Meshi is geared at older readers than the examples I gave above, so one would expect that the names and their meanings should be less silly and more realistic, and I think they are!
The names in Dungeon Meshi have clearly been picked with a lot of thought and great care, and very few (if any!) are only jokes or shallow references.