Pokemon X & Y Names Chosen To Represent A Cultural Meeting Point

Pokemon X & Y director Junichi Masuda has explained in the latest Iwata Asks segment that they named the game’s after the world’s axis, as a way to convey the idea that all players exist on the same plan despite our difference. Masuda says that the X and Y represent the x horizontal axis and the y vertical axis. These two axis always meet somewhere so it’s where people who have different views meet regardless of languages, cultures and mindsets.

“The world holds people with all sorts of ways of thinking, and you can get a sense that they exist in different dimensions. But if you think of them as people who think on the x axis and people who think on the y axis — horizontal and vertical axes — then they intersect somewhere. We may think differently, but we all live on the same planet, so everyone eats, sleeps and goes about their business day after day just like everyone else.

“So we consulted a lot of people, like [character designer] (Ken) Sugimori-san, and eventually decided this route was simple and easy to understand,” Masuda said. “And while the pronunciation of the letter may change by country, the shape of the letter is the same the world over-for example, we say ‘ekkusu’ for the letter X in Japanese, but in French they say ‘ix’-so in that way too, it was an appropriate way to name these games.”