Nonsensical “foreign” name スレオテル・レイズ in a 1996 video game?

Hello. In an old car anime PlayStation game Ray Tracers, there’s a character whose name makes zero sense; “SLEOTEEL RAZE”. The katakana is in the title.

Could it have been transliterated incorrectly? What name could they have meant? Theo something?

It’s bugging me since I learned katakana!

4 comments
  1. The game itself Romanizes the name as Sleoteel in the character select, which goes a bit against typical Romanization rules (the double e isn’t indicated by the kana in any way). My best guess is it’s supposed to evoke the Dutch *sleutel*, which means ‘key’.

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