Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's shrine names are inspired by Kyoto, Japan

With The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Nintendo revealed that the shrine names were inspired by the many members of the dev team. In Tears of the Kingdom, the names of shrines are completely different. While we didn’t know their inspiration at first, some Zelda superfans have made an impressive discovery.

A number of different Tears of the Kingdom players were wondering where exactly Nintendo came up with the names for the shrines in Tears of the Kingdom, and it turns out the inspiration comes from Japan itself. In particular, it seems like many of the shrine names have direct references to locations found in Kyoto, Japan.

One example is Irasak Shrine, which is another name for Rakusai, a southwestern area of Kyoto. Then there’s Shifumimi Shrine, which is named after the Fushimi Ward. These are just a couple of examples in a massive collection of references and direct translations. If you’re curious to see more of these naming inspirations, you can see a fan-made map for cross-reference here.