Nobody really cared who the president of Nintendo of America was when Minoru Arakawa founded the company in 1980. With games like "Radarscope" and "Sheriff," it was just another Taito wannabe trying to break into the U.S. arcade market.
By 1982, when Arakawa hired outside legal counsel Howard Lincoln on a full-time basis, the name Nintendo meant something.
Actually, the name "Donkey Kong" meant something, and the name Nintendo was vaguely associated with it.