revolutionary girl » her name

It's no secret that Arakawa has a certain liking for well-thought names. Although Fullmetal Alchemist takes place in an alternate universe, Amestris is greatly based on England during the Industrial Revolution, even though it also combines other countries from periods between the 17th and 19th centuries. Likewise, the names chosen for her characters have a particular origin not completely unrelated to Amestris' foundation.

In the case of the military-related cast, most of their names originate from aircrafts and other vehicles used for military service. The E-2 Hawkeye is an American carrier-based tactical aircraft. It was designed and developed during the 1950s by the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation. Grumman is also the name of Hawkeye's grandfather from her mother's side, who's moreover a Lieutenant General within the military.

The E-2 Hawkeye's principal duty consists in providing all-weather airborne early warning and command and control functions for the carrier battle group. Additional missions include surface surveillance coordination, strike and interceptor control, search and rescue guidance and communications relay. Due to all these characteristics and ever since it replaced the E-1 in 1964, the Hawkeye has been called "the eyes of the fleet". Quite fitting.

Also a deviation from her last name is her nickname, the Eye of the Hawk, given to her by soldiers who fought the Ishval War beside her. A hawk is a bird of prey widely reputed to have visual acuity several times that of a normal human being, so it makes sense an extremely gifted sniper such as Hawkeye would be given a name like that. Although these aliases stopped being used after the war, the Hero of Ishval (Mustang) and the Eye of the Hawk (Hawkeye) are still legends among soldiers.

Her given name, Riza, is widely assumed to be an alteration of the name Lisa or Liza, and is not a shortened form for Elizabeth (although she has used it as a codename for undercover missions). Her name is always written in katakana (alphabet used for foreign words) in Japanese and reads as follows:

Hawkeye is mostly referred to by her surname, rank or a combination of the two. So far, only two people have called her by her given name with no honorifics — her late father and a younger Roy Mustang.