Dear Reader:
Phoenix Wright was almost named Roger, says the man behind the original game's localization
A portion of a USGamer interview with Alex Smith, the writer who first localized Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney...
"It really stood out in the crowd. Especially when you're talking about humor, it's very unusual, I think, even in Japan, to have a game of that caliber with the writing as tight as it was... I think there's a tendency to treat those games as kid fodder. From stuff I've seen, when you see something comedic, it's really appealing to the kids more. It's more the He-Man era of Saturday morning cartoons as opposed to the Phineas and Ferb era of Saturday morning cartoons. [With Ace Attorney] there's a writer, there—not something you can say about a lot of Japanese games.
My original suggestion for Phoenix Wright was 'Roger Wright.' I had come up with a list of first names and a list of last names, and submitted that to Capcom. And, in those, 'Phoenix' was one of the first name options, but pretty far down on my list. And Roger was at the top. And 'Wright,' I felt, had to be the his last name, because of the pun in Japanese... 'Naruhodo' was used so many times in the text as a joke. Also, it's just self-deprecating humor, where the one guy whose name is 'I get it!' just doesn't get it. I needed something that was bold and like, 'Yeah right, I got it!' so he could say that and kind of own that attitude, even though he had no idea what he was doing.
So 'Wright' was there, and 'Roger' was my first choice, because heroes—they like to have alliteration. Also, if you've ever seen the movie Airplane, ['Roger'] is a great source of silly jokes as well. So that seemed like a name with a lot of potential. They ended up going for 'Phoenix' because they liked the heroism of it, and there was a comment from the Japanese dev team—they felt like 'Roger Wright' sounded too much like 'Roger Rabbit."
If you're wondering, Capcom also considered the names of 'Pierce,' 'Xavier,' 'Marcus,' and 'Zane'.