Contra is a long-running series of run and gun games.
The name in Japanese, 魂斗羅 (Kontora), is written in ateji rather than katakana as most loan words.
On PAL systems, the games were localized as Probotector, probably a combination of "Protector" and "Robot". The characters, who are humans in the original games, were re-skinned as robots. This practice, both the reskinning and renaming, was stopped later in the series.
Early arcade and PC versions were localized as Gryzor.