Japanese Pokémon Names
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?!).
Comments
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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).
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I personally don't know anything like this, but I'm interested to see what gets commented. Definitely an interesting article.
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Did you know that Pikachu is called Pikachu in Japanese?
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Also, all Mythical Pokémon except (spoiler) have the same name in Japanese and English, though it's sometimes said differently (like Arceus).
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Loud Bone
(I'll leave you all to guess what it is)
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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.
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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".
:D1
