What Jenga Means?

Playing Jenga is an outburst of thrilling moments with shrieks, laughter, suspense, and animated cheering. It’s indeed a great game that could last for 15 minutes more or less per game. Leslie Scott, she had something wonderful that the rest of the world would enjoy and feel that too.

Leslie Scott was born in Tanzania, raised in West and East Africa, and educated in Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and England. She eventually settled in Oxford, but never to look back to where everything started.

It was a slow and steady rise for Jenga that started in Ghana and it was first introduced in the London Toy Fair in 1983. It took time with some twists and turns to finally break into the toy industry and leave a mark. As you could say, and the rest is history.

The inspiration for Jenga started on a game Leslie would play with her family using her younger brother’s wooden building blocks in the ’70s.

After several years of playing with the family, Scott decided to modify, name, and manufacture the now highly-addictive party game of Jenga.

She believed in her game as she said when Jenga became a hit; In a world that was getting more and more complex, this was something simple, and sometimes simple works. And it did very well!

Where did the name Jenga come from and what does it mean?

Jenga came from the Swahili word Kujenga meaning “to build”, that represents more than just a tower of building blocks. After all, throughout our lives as people, we find ourselves building many things.

And Jenga offers a long list of benefits that include physical, mental, and important skills. It empowers you to be able to build using a quick mind and solution that you could use in your life too.

All the Jenga blocks are all connected and lead to one thing. Just like in playing it. Aside from building it, you get to learn about gravity, physics, engineering, stability, and a lot more.

You learn to make wise choices and decisions and while building it, one must be cautious and risks are taken with the stability of the tower at stake.

Things do not always go according to our plans but we always are the bigger person and try to build again.

You might run out of moves and you need to decide. Either stay as you are, or take a chance deciding to remove a block and risk the tower tumbling down.

Its name is so fitting to its concept since the tower would fall eventually. But there is another opportunity to try again. We could build again and again.

After Thoughts

Leslie wanted a unique and different name that Americans wouldn’t be familiar with. She wanted a foreign-sounding name so the birth of Jenga came in.

Irwin Toy and Hasbro Corporation adored and loved the game but never agreed on Jenga as its name. Leslie was firm on her belief and fought for her choice of name.

We now know, who got his or her way.

Jenga did!