Over the years, several theories emerged as to why the game was called Final Fantasy. In 2015, Sakaguchi revealed that, from the beginning, the team had wished for a name that could be shortened to ; that way, the game's title could be abbreviated in the Latin script and pronounced in four syllables in the Japanese language. The original working title for Sakaguchi's RPG concept was Fighting Fantasy, but was changed to avoid issues with a gamebook series of the same name that had already been released. The reason for choosing the word "final" to form the eventual title of Final Fantasy was explained as twofold by Uematsu: for one thing, it stemmed from Sakaguchi's personal situation, as he would have quit the game industry and gone back to university had the game not sold well, and for another, Square was under the threat of bankruptcy at the time, which meant the game could have been the company's last. Although Sakaguchi confirmed some of the theories, he later downplayed the rationale for choosing the word "final", saying that "it was definitely a back-to-the-wall type situation back then, but any word that starts with an 'F' would have been fine".
