Lunch / Launch

[ABED]

Where did FUNi get Launch from? If it's a reference to Far Out Space Nuts, that's pretty damn clever.

[Soppa Saia People]

according to a couple of herms' guides from a few years ago, launch is a perfectly valid way to translate her name, and considering the fact that toriyama has forgotten what pun her name is based off of, it's possible that launch is actually what it should be.

[MyVisionity]

I don't know if it's ever been stated where Funimation got "Launch" from, but I suppose it is possible someone was a fan of Space Nuts.

I used to think maybe it was because of her propensity for firearms, and because it might sound "hardcore".

ランチ ranchi can be translated as both "lunch" and "launch". And it has never explicitly been stated that her name in the original is taken from "lunch". However, I believe there is a title page or some image from the manga that has the name "LUNCH" written alongside the character. Also I recall that in her final cameo in the Boo saga she is running some kind of food delivery service called "ランチ Express" or something like that. This might imply that the name of the service is a play on the word "lunch".

Additionally, I imagine Funi would have had the name prepared back in 94/95 since apparently they had the scripts ready for the Tournament Saga back then.

[TheBigBoy]

Maybe they thought calling a scantily clad woman "Lunch" was in poor taste.

[Robo4900]

Additionally, I imagine Funi would have had the name prepared back in 94/95 since apparently they had the scripts ready for the Tournament Saga back then.

We don't know for sure if they had scripts, but they definitely had provisional episode titles with summaries, which do indeed confirm that they first decided to call her "Launch" back in '94/'95:

■ 15. “Launch”

While in town on an errand to prove their worth to Master Roshi, Goku and Krillin rescue Launch, a young woman, from the police. They bring her back to Roshi’s island, where they discover her mysterious and enigmatic situation. On one hand, she’s a nice, sweet, friendly, unassuming woman, but then she sneezes, and she becomes a tough, fiery, uncontrollably combative warrior. In the end, the boys have proven their worth.

FWIW, I don't think we know precisely what "an errand" is, maybe whatever script change this was is in the edited Funi dub, or maybe they didn't change it at all, who knows. Perhaps they hadn't totally figured it out yet; there are a few provisional things in this listing. Episode 7 is listed as "Battle of Mt. Yermak", which would eventually be renamed to "The Ox King on Fire Mountain". My guess is Mt Yermak is a holdover from the Harmony Gold dub; in fact, I'd guess pretty much all of these episode titles are borrowed from Harmony Gold, with some names changed to match Funi's dub. The only one that doesn't fit this pattern for the Harmony Gold episodes we know to exist is episode 1, which uses the same title as Funi would eventually use in the '95 dub, "Secret Of The Dragonball"; the rest more closely match the early titles, "Zedaki The Warrior" = "Yamcha The Warrior", etc. So we can assume all except episode 23 are what Harmony Gold planned on... Though #23 is difficult, as it uses a weird approximation of Giran, "Grillin". Maybe that's a Harmony Gold invention, maybe that was a placeholder Funi version of Giran's name, we don't know...

But, in any case, for Lunch specifically, "Launch" was definitely thought up as early as November/December 1995.