Character · Dragon Ball
Dende
The Namekian child who spends the invasion being carried from place to place ends up running Earth.
In Otakana the clue reads: Young healer who becomes Earth's guardian
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Dragon Ball
- Letters
- 5 · Normal
Dende turns up during the Namek arc as a small survivor of a village Frieza's soldiers have just emptied. He is not a fighter. What he has is the healing ability that runs in one Namekian line, and on a planet where everyone is being killed faster than they can be revived, that makes him the most useful person in the field. He puts Krillin, Gohan and eventually Vegeta back on their feet at the exact moments the fight turns.
Later he takes the job of Earth's guardian, left open when Kami rejoined Piccolo. It is a promotion the story earns rather than announces: the guardian creates the Dragon Balls, so the new set and their rules are Dende's design, and the wishes get more generous under him. He watches the fights from the Lookout with better information than anyone on the ground and no ability to intervene.
Namekian names come from slugs and snails, a joke that fits a green species with antennae and a habit of growing things. Dende comes from denden mushi, an old word for a snail, which puts him in the same naming family as the planet he was born on and the elder who raised him.
Spelling DENDE
DENDE is five letters and spells exactly the way it sounds, den-de, with both E's short. No long vowel has been trimmed and no consonant swapped. The shape is the memorable part: the D and the E both appear twice, in an alternating pattern, so a single confirmed letter tends to give you two positions at once.