From Laura Cruz to Lara Croft
Lara Croft began development under a different name: Laura Cruz. As the team at British studio Core Design shaped the character for Tomb Raider, they moved away from that name and settled on Lara Croft, giving their heroine an identity that sounded more at home in the game’s British setting.
That change was part of a broader design choice. The developers wanted a distinctive lead character for an action-adventure game built around exploration, ruins, and danger—not simply a generic adventurer. Her name helped make her feel like a particular person before players learned anything about her.
Why the name mattered
A name can quietly signal where a character belongs. “Laura Cruz” suggests a different background from “Lara Croft”; the final choice aligned the heroine more closely with the world and sensibility the British team was creating. It also gave the character a crisp, memorable name suited to appearing on a game box and becoming the focus of the series.
The change was small compared with designing the game itself, but it helped turn a working concept into a recognizable identity. The character who became one of gaming’s best-known heroines nearly entered players’ imaginations under a very different name.
