Pokémon Names from Around the World

[Talon87]

The thread title is pretty broad, but there's just one specific thing I wanted to talk about today.

There was an artist whose work I shared in the Pokémon Fanart thread a few weeks ago. I recently discovered his Twitpic account, by which I found some pretty nice sketches and other drawings he (for whatever personal reasons) hasn't uploaded to his Pixiv account. I decided, "Oh what the heck " and looked him up on Twitter to see what all he was saying. And as I scrolled through the tweets, I came upon this one:

カンナさん、英語名は｢ローレライ｣なんだね格好良すぎる

It says, "Kanna-san's English name is 'Lorelei', right? That is too cool!" Needless to say, Kanna is the original name of Lorelei, the Ice-type master and member of Kanto's Elite Four.

This isn't the first time recently I've come across Japanese fans showing enthusiasm for the English names of Pokémon or Pokémon characters. When the Gen 6 trailer was revealed last month, I noticed that some Japanese fan artists on Pixiv (and no, not Westerners with Pixiv accounts) were drawing up their own drawings of the new starters ... and then placing the English names rather than the Japanese names right there in the artwork. Obviously not everyone would do this -- they're still a minority of fans as far as I can tell -- but it still surprises me each time to come across Japanese fans displaying such enthusiasm for our name changes. In my experience, it's typical of most Western fans to resent localization -- including name changes -- in Japanese imported media. They prefer it when everything is left as is, and the localization team only translates what is being said from the source language (Japanese) to the target language (English). And I don't think this is just a Western thing or an anime & video games fandom thing: for centuries, one of the reasons people have always expressed for wanting to learn a foreign language is so that they can read some specific piece of literature "the way it was originally written" rather than having to rely on someone else's translation. But here we seem to have a very interesting role reversal: we have the originators of the name (or rather, the people indigenous to the nation where the name first arose) exhibiting curiosity about and enthusiasm towards the names that foreign localization teams have gone with when importing the media from Japan to their own countries. And it goes beyond merely expressing a mild amusement in the name! We've got artists opting to just use the English name to the exclusion of the original one, a name from their native tongue. And we've got other artists, like this guy on Twitter, expressing "Man, that is so cool!" over a name like Lorelei. Well, I guess Lorelei is a pretty cool name. But like ... still. ^^; It comes as a surprise to me to see fans so enthusiastic about these name changes instead of being all "HORRIBLE! JUST HORRIBLE! LOOK AT WHAT THOSE YANKEE BASTARDS DID TO PRECIOUS KANNA'S NAME!"

I dunno. Maybe it's just me. You tell me. Does it surprise you too to see Japanese fans exhibiting enthusiasm towards the English localized names that NoA has come up with over the years?

Here: have some pretty Lorelei fanart.

[Shuckle]

To be brutally honest, Lorelei is just...the best name in Pokemon. In any of the games. So it's really not surprising that some Japanese people like it more than Kanna (it has an appeal, but...Lorelei is so much better).

I wonder if there are any names in Japanese that are more popular with English audiences than with Japanese audiences, and vice versa, and perhaps some converse action going on here. Willing to bet:

So it turns out that the Elite Four members are all plants. Why didn't we do this in English? That would have actually been pretty cool...

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by Shuckle

I wonder if there are any names in Japanese that are more popular with English audiences than with Japanese audiences, and vice versa, and perhaps some converse action going on here.

Depends on what you'd define by "English audiences." I've noticed a small but observable handful of Japanese fans doing the whole "English name only" thing recently. There's certainly at least a small, if not a large, and observable handful of Western fans who weeaboo it up and insist that everyone be called by their original Japanese names. I think you're aware of this. Which is why I ask you, what would it take for you to consider the Japanese name's popularity a legitimate example of the converse trend and not simply weeaboos being weeaboos?

There are some Japanese names I prefer, but it's usually pretty baseless. I like Natsume more than Sabrina. I like Mikan more than Jasmine (especially since it fits her hair adornments). But I am okay with their English names. After all, they're what I knew first anyway.

That leads to the next category of names where I tend to prefer the Japanese names, and that's whenever I wouldn't really give a crap either way but the Japanese names are the ones I learned first (and in many cases are the only ones I know). This is especially true of anime-only characters, so like ... I prefer Dent to Cilan, I prefer Cabernet, Langley, Kenyan, and Kotetsu to whatever their names are in English (I've heard 'em before but don't remember 'em, and sure didn't care for 'em! ), and so on. But it's not a weeaboo thing, and the proof of that is pretty simple for me to provide. Despite watching the entire series raw (all 276 episodes covering Kanto, Orange Islands, and Johto) over the past couple of years, I don't recall Casey's Japanese name. (I would if you told me it.) I don't recall Harrison's Japanese name. I don't recall Professor Ivy's name. I don't recall Ritchie's Japanese name. (I think it was Hiroshi, but I wouldn't bet any money on it.) This goes to show the power of the primacy effect: whatever name you see first, that to you in your own world is "the official name". If I were weeabooing things up, this wouldn't be the case. I'd toss the old English names out in favor of their Japanese replacements. But, like I said, I don't tend to do that. I tend to just like "whatever I knew first", with a few kinda quirky exceptions (like Natsume and Mikan mentioned earlier).

As for Pokémon names, I'd say I like ours better and I like theirs better about 50/50. A lot of their names are really dumb and can hardly even be called puns. Like, Chimchar is Hikozaru, literally "Fire Baby Monkey". There's no pun there really: it's just fire (hi), baby monkey (kozaru). It's not like "hiko" means charcoal or "koza" means "brazer" or something fire-related. Some of their names are really bad imo, like their names for the Eeveelutions. Oh dear lord did we kick their ass there. Jolteon > Thunders, Vaporeon > Showers, Flareon > Booster, Umbreon > Blackie, and Espeon > Ayfee. But then there are some names they come up with where ours are definite downgrades. Like, I think Rougela (from rouge, borrowed from the French to refer to makeup or lipstick) fits Jynx better than the word "jinx" does. I thought Yorterry was fine, clearly referencing the Yorkshire terrier inspiration for the creature, and didn't benefit from being changed to Lillipup, which to me feels redundant anyway. (Pups are already known to be tiny animals, so why are you adding Lilliputian's Lilli- in front of that? ) Volcarona > Ulgamoth imo but Hahakomori > Leavanny (but if you don't know Japanese then you wouldn't get that name, sure), on and on it can go.

[Slash]

I actually think Kanna is a better name than Lorelei. A few characters and Pokémon I prefer the Japanese names (Mijumaru, Hihidaruma, Vulgina, Lizardon, Onigohri, Kotone, Satoshi), while some English names I prefer (Dewott, Jolteon, Cubchoo), although to be honest, I prefer most English ones, just because that's just what I was first exposed to. Then again, some of the French ones I find simply awesome (Démétéros, Mateloutre, Tutankafer), so who knows.

[Jerichi]

Here's the thing I like better about Japanese names for NPCs: they're all idiosyncratic. Most of the choices for names in translation were either puns (Morty, Pryce, Brock, Misty) or just sound nice (Claire, Blaine). Japan, however, has had a very consistent naming scheme that names just about every important NPC after a plant. I like that theming personally, and I feel like it reflects on the thought they put into their character design. English names, however, seem a little half-assed (Candice? Brycen? Really? How many times are you going to make this same joke?) and miss out on the subtle nuances that the Japanese editions hold.

[Talon87]

God bless Melissa (Fantima) for throwing a solid wrench into the works for that trend. I only say that because while the plant naming pattern thing is interesting (and not something I was really aware of being quite so widespread as it apparently is), it feels rather forced in many of the cases I'm finding on Bulbapedia, and that annoys me. ^^; Some examples include Takeshi (a common name no one associates with bamboo because it isn't ever spelled that way), Kasumi (likewise, a name associated with the bonafide word 霞 kasumi "mist" and where we took our own name for her from), Tessen (Wattson, whose name refers to wire, sort of like how the name of the Pokémon he uses, Coil / Magnemite, refers to a coil of wire), and a couple of others. Some of them are undeniably plant-based though, like Mikan from mandarin oranges and Akane from the Japanese madder, both of which are names that 100% derive from these sources. And many of them toe the line between a plant-based name and an intended alternate reading, thus making them puns in their own right. Clair's a good example of this, as Ibuki refers both to the Chinese juniper (thus making it so that she was the original PokéJuniper? ;o) and to breath, a joke made in the cave when she gives you the TM for Dragonbreath that was totally lost in translation to English. ^^;