Article #4893

Elisabeth Zetland, a senior researcher at MyHeritage, found that the actual Luigi had immigrated to US from Italy

Gaming enthusiasts have known for years that Nintendo named its mustachioed, superhero plumber after the company’s landlord, Washington state businessman Mario Arnold Segale.

But it has only just been determined that Nintendo may have unknowingly named Super Mario’s fictional brother after Segale’s real-life father: Luigi, whose biography evokes that of millions of 20th-century US immigrants from Italy.