Swahili Dog Names

As mentioned above, The Lion King was one of the first major productions to introduce elements of Swahili to American audiences. Whether those audiences knew it or not, almost every character in the movie had a Swahili name barring Timon, whose name was either of Ancient Greek origin or stemmed from that of Shakespeare — which wouldn’t be a surprise given that The Lion King’s plot is so similar to Hamlet. 

Even though the film centered around animals native to eastern Africa (the animators did most of their research at Hell’s Gate National Park in Kenya), that list did happen to include a relative of the domesticated dog: Hyenas. 

The trio of hyenas featured in the film were named Shenzi (“savage” in Swahili), Banzai (“to skulk”) and Ed (which just means Ed), and individually and as a group had a significant impact on the film’s main story arc — they were all disciples of Scar, the movie’s main antagonist. As such, they were given several different tasks, which mostly centered around dispatching Simba so Scar could gain top status amongst the Pride Lands. 

Although hyenas are regarded and treated as idiots in the movie, they not only prove to be resourceful and intelligent, but are generally only foiled by the luck of their adversaries as well as circumstance (such as being too large to fit into the thorny brush that Simba escapes through). This actually holds true in reality as well, since hyenas were long thought to be lazy scavengers who only ate the leftovers of other predators, yet upon closer inspection, were found to be highly clever, using various hunting tactics to take down prey on their own. 

But outside of their pivotal roles, and even though they are technically villainous characters, all three are generally some of the most memorable the movie and franchise rolled out. While most of the rest of the characters are likable simply because they are kind, generous or just plain good-hearted, Shenzi, Banzai and Ed are still fun characters because they have a sense of humor — who can forget Ed’s laugh or his constant leg-chewing? — and often have to walk the line of being outcasts, which tends to generate sympathy. 

Although the trio could have been dispatched with after the first movie, they remained popular enough to appear in nearly every Lion King iteration that has been produced since, including feature films, animated series, video games and are even in four different Disneyworld/Disneyland attractions.