Japanese Pokémon Names

UnovanZorua

Happy New Year! I'm going to start this Year with spreading how weird some Pokémon names are in Japanese. Some are good, but some are just straight up a real, normal word.

For example, Charmeleon. It's called Lizardo in Japanese. Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, are called Freezer, Thunder, and Fire.

There's probably a lot more but I don't feel like looking through the entire Pokédex in Japanese, these are just some I saw a few times and stayed in my memory that I checked on **** for a few seconds to make sure are correct (because did they really name these like that? Did they really decide to name a Pokémon FIRE, out of all the things they could've named it?!).

FallenFurfrou

Yes.

As for other weird Japanese Pokemon names, Skarmory's name in Japanese is Airmd (eamudo).

Personally, two of my favorite Japanese names are Jihead/Jiheddo (Zweilous' JP name) and Mitsuhoney/Mitsuhanii (that's Combee).

Gallady64

my favourite that comes to mind straight away is Blacephalon’s, which is Zugadoon, which can be literally translated as “head goes boom”!

Michael629303

I personally don't know anything like this, but I'm interested to see what gets commented. Definitely an interesting article.

puplover1118

Did you know that Pikachu is called Pikachu in Japanese?

UnovanZorua

@puplover1118

Also, all Mythical Pokémon except (spoiler) have the same name in Japanese and English, though it's sometimes said differently (like Arceus).

Ravenclawed1234

Loud Bone

(I'll leave you all to guess what it is)

Flametix

the classics of gen 1 are SAND and CRAB

I would also post magmar's japanese name but I don't think it would go through

Acornyo

I found some (personally) really funny ones:

-Sentret is Otachi, and since Furret is a longer version, it's Ootachi.

-Corsola is Sunnygo. Matches the vibes it gives off.

-Cramorant is "Uu". JUST Uu.

Also, just don't look at what Mandibuzz is called. Don't do it.

TheJeffers

I moved to Japan before gen 7 and since then have only played the games in Japanese. Certainly for the early gens the English names have been drummed into my head since childhood and I have to think about the Japanese names. Around gens 5 and 6 it is a mixture of the two, because I had started learning Japanese and played in both languages.

It is funny looking at the names of not only Pokémon, but things in the world in general. Many things in Japanese simply use their generic English names but in the English version had the prefix "Poké". Pokéballs are the most obvious example. In Japanese they are just Monster Balls.

Yu-Gi-Oh had similar translation practices for its early cards, in fact giving English versions of cards the Japanese translation of the English word used in Japan. For example サンダー·ボルト (Thunder Bolt) became Raigeki in the English version.