Maybe We Don’t Need to Call Birdo ‘Birdetta’

Hi. I am only writing this because it’s come a few times since I posted the complete history of Birdo’s gender last year, and it’s come up again after my episode of A Super Mario Moment, where at one point we discuss the controversy surrounding her name. Rather than going into detail every time, I thought it would be easier to just offer up a link to this post that explains all this in greater detail than I can fit into a single response on social media.

Here’s the matter at hand: Given how the original Super Mario Bros. 2 instruction manual identifies Birdo as a creature that “thinks he is a girl [and would] rather be called Birdetta,” isn’t it kind of fucked up that we’ve called her Birdo ever since? Aren’t we deadnaming her? And shouldn’t we address her with her chosen name, Birdetta, rather than the name that sounds distinctly more masculine?

First up, I will say that if you’d rather call her Birdetta, out of a sense of politeness or trans solidarity or any other reason, then you should totally feel free to do that. I, a cis guy, would not dare to legislate how we should refer to the most famous trans character in the history of video games. That said, if you’re asking because you’re unsure of which name to use or because you want to reconcile why Nintendo continues to call her Birdo, there’s a train of thought as to why.

Back in the day, official text documenting video games was rare to come by, so often the instruction manuals were the beginning and the end of any sort of comprehension of the world laid out on our TV screens. As a result, the booklets that came with games such as Super Mario Bros. 2 got held up as being infallible scripture that should dictate the games released down the line. But this isn’t necessarily true. Don’t forget, for example, that the instruction manual for the original Super Mario Bros. identifies the game’s damsel in distress as Princess Toadstool, and she hasn’t gone by that name since 1996. And the instruction manual for Super Mario Bros. 3 identifies the Koopalings as Bowser’s children, which is not the case anymore and maybe was not even the case in the Japanese version, to say nothing of the fact that the English version gives them names when the Japanese version did not. 

While any of the information in these manuals could become series canon that’s still honored decades later, not all of it did, and even the stuff that is considered canon could be dropped if the higher-ups at Nintendo make that decision. And I’m absolutely fine believing that post-Super Mario Bros. 2, Nintendo just moved past the notion that Birdo is a male character who merely wants to be female, because moving forward, she’s mostly been referred to with female pronouns without much acknowledgement of there being confusion or debate about her gender. Her name is Birdo, and she is a she; like the princess being named Toadstool at one point in the past but no longer, any lingering notion that Birdo wanted to have a different name has been pushed out of the canon, aside from the occasion aside here or there.

As I point out on A Super Mario Moment, if Birdo had a name she’d rather be called, I feel like she’d tell us. She’s not exactly a shrinking violet. She’s very much a diva, very much into creating a specific image for herself. What’s more, much in the way a lot of Yoshi’s dialogue is him just saying his own name, Pokémon-style, Birdo often does the same among her squawks and quacks. She’s literally telling us what to call her.

There are games in which she doesn’t do this — Mario Kart World, for example, unless I’m mistaken — and I’m not sure if her pronunciations of “Birdo!” also exist in the Japanese versions of these games, where her name is Catherine, but that actually leads into the final point in this little explainer.

It is technically true that the “would rather be called Birdetta” part is more or less lifted from the original Japanese manual for Doki Doki Panic, where the description identifies the character as Catherine (キャサリン, Kyasarin) but says she likes being called Cathy (キャシー, Kyasī). I get into it in the big Birdo post, but the big difference is that both Catherine and Cathy are distinctly feminine names, the distinction between them being that the latter is just a less formal nickname for the former. Whoever localized the English manual for Super Mario Bros. 2 saddled her with the name Birdo and then underscored the “joke” about her gender with a more feminine-sounding name that she preferred to be called. Regardless of the original Doki Doki Panic text, however, she’s still Catherine in Japan — not Cathy, regardless of her preferences.

So that’s it. In my head at least, you don’t need to feel conflicted about calling her Birdo, but if you do, you can just call her Birdetta and everyone will understand who you’re referring to.

Also, if you’re finishing this post and you’re like, “Who the fuck is this cis guy talking about Birdo’s gender identity?” then check out my very in-depth post on Birdo as proof that this is something I have thought about more than maybe any other human alive. If you have lingering questions about her history in video games and the way her gender has been portrayed over time, I think this will answer all of them. If not, please feel free to yell at me in the comments.

I will close with the note that Nintendo has technically never followed up with any declaration about Birdo’s gender, one way or another. That said, something I mention on A Super Mario Moment that is perhaps worth noting here, Super Mario World gives Birdo what’s called her “vacation” outfit that is white, pink and light blue. It is the colors of the trans pride flag.

If that’s a coincidence, it seems like a pretty wild one.