In a 2001 V-Jump magazine interview with the game's character designer Tetsuya Nomura, he said that when designing Tidus' emblem, he thought of various things related to the ocean, like fishing hooks, fishbones, whale fins, and based his designs about them. He mentioned that Tidus' necklace is the emblem for his blitzball team, the Zanarkand Abes. And also stated that he came up with the idea before the Al Bhed language was written, but the shape design of the necklace is actually the combined letters of "T" + "J" from the start of Tidus & Jecht's names.