We’ve heard that “Zelda” comes from the name of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife, but we now have even more details about the how and why.
Miyamoto states that he was always going to call the series “The Legend of X,” but he didn’t seem to have a perfect idea what word the “X” could be. Their planner and public relations person suggested they do a storybook of the game, including that the princess should be a beauty appealing to all men. >The planner also mentioned to Miyamoto that American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife–Zelda–was renown for her eternal beauty.
(((The planner)))
kikepedia/wiki/Zelda_Fitzgerald Born in Montgomery, Alabama, she was noted for her beauty and high spirits, and was dubbed by her husband as "the first American Flapper". She and Scott became emblems of the Jazz Age, for which they are still celebrated. The immediate success of Scott's first novel This Side of Paradise (1920) brought them into contact with high society, but their marriage was plagued by wild drinking, infidelity and bitter recriminations.
After being diagnosed with schizophrenia, she was increasingly confined to specialist clinics, and the couple were living apart when Scott died suddenly in 1940. Zelda died seven years later in a fire at the hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, in which she was a patient.