Japanese Pokémon Names

L_LostWord · February 15

-Cramorant is "Uu". JUST Uu.

There's a clear reason behind this, actually. "U" is the Japanese word for the cormorant, the real world species of bird Cramorant is based on. Its Japanese name is transliterated in katakana as: ウッウ. The face-like symbol in the middle is called a sokuon and is actually a smaller version of the symbol for "tsu" (its either version of tsu in either kana system, っ in hiragana and ッ in katakana). It's used as a glottal stop, if you understand what that is, but think of the phrase "uh-oh". Other than being a unique JP name, all I am confident with is of course the "u = cormorant" situation, it's also kind of hard to romanize without the glottal stop symbol so we can always say "u-u", and they probably were trying to make it sound like gulping or something.

L_LostWord · February 15

I'm always one for Pokémon's Japanese names, as I am currently learning Japanese (I can read both kana systems and speak Japanese very well). There's some fun ones for me.

Eevee is just "Eevee" ("ībui" since V's in JP are generally transliterated as B's), but the Eeveelutions, weirdly enough, are not the same as their EN names and don't even have a common naming theme like how in EN they all end in "-eon".

Charjabug is the only Pokémon whose JP name has "dji" in it ("dendjimushi", "dji" is pronounced "ji" and is when "chi" gets a dakuten added. In Japanese, "dji" is rarely used and only really appears in instances of rendaku, "ji" as "shi" with a dakuten almost always represents the "ji" sound instead)

Ralts and Kirlia are the only members of their lines whose JP names are correspondent to their EN names.

There are also of course Pokémon whose names have JP origins, like Dedenne for example, coming from “denki" (electric) and "antennae" which is why its name is pronounced "deh-deh-ney" or "deh-deh-neh". They really like doing these with Pikaclones, I mean, Pachirisu is "pachi-pachi" (crackling) and "risu" (squirrel), apparently Emolga comes from "emon" (drapery) and "momonga" (flying squirrel), Togedemaru can literally mean something like "round with spikes" ("toge" is "thorn" but in Pokémon names where it's also seen in the Togepi line's names it can just mean “spike", "maru" is "round", and "de" is just a particle), and, I don't know how many consider it a Pikaclone and how many don't, but it makes sense to be one, but all I can think of for Mimikyu is that its derived from "mimic" and "Pikachu".

:D