Ishihara Talks About Difficulty Of Naming Pokemon During Localisation

Japanese news publication Inside Games recently had the opportunity to participate in an interview with Pokemon CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara. There was plenty of juicy information brought up in the interview including the problems of naming Pokemon for the various regions. It certainly hasn’t been an easy task choosing a fitting English name for each Pokemon. Here’s what Ishihara had to say about the trouble that the team went through.

“We were most troubled with the problem as to whether Pikachu should remain as Pikachu. For Japanese people, Pika comes from electricity and Chu stems from mouse, but outside Japan it would be meaningless and nonsense. Nonsense cannot be valued. People won’t be able to answer whether onomatopoeia they don’t understand the meaning of is good or bad. So we had no other options but to think about them one by one.”

“We made Pikachu [‘s name] the same all across the world. They may not know the meaning, but we secured the Pikachu trademark worldwide, so we decided to just go with Pikachu. But if everything was the same [as Japanese] it would be a total disarray of meaning, since Fushigidane’s name came from it carrying a mysterious (fushigi) seed (tane) on its back. We mixed Bulb – which can also mean Seed – with Saurus from Dinosaurs, and it became Bulbasaur. When we asked Americans just to make sure, they had the image of a reptile or amphibian carrying a bud on their back, so it was OK. For Hitokage, we mixed Charcoal and Salamander to become Charmander. Arbo is also difficult to understand, so we made it Ekans. But the latter is actually an anagram of Snake.”

“We don’t use regularity in determining the English names, but instead everyone had to think their best and use their creativity for each word one by one. By that way, each Pokemon will feel livelier. While we’re taking in puns from each country, mysterious creatures are inserted into them. By having a huge percentage of the 151 Pokemon having different names from Japanese, the anime dubbing also became multiple times harder though… But thanks to [people] putting their best in giving names, it contributed largely to getting accepted by the world.”

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