I know that the main protagonists name is サトシ after Satoshi Tajiri (田尻智), the creator himself but his name was changed to Ash Ketchum (same with how タケシ became Brock, ヒカリ (光) was called Dawn, カスミ (霞) became Misty, and so on). ゼニガメ (from 銭亀 = “baby spotted turtle”) was adapted to Squirtle or フシギダネ is renamed as Bulbasaur, ヒトカゲ is known as Charmander in ENG.
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To make it more marketable
This is the answer. Just look at the pocket monsters concept notebook and you will know they took something cool and marketed the hell out of it
(from 銭亀 = “baby spotted turtle”) was adapted to Squirtle
Well there you have a perfect example. “baby spotted turtle” is quite the mouthful and doesn’t really work well as a name in English.
First generation of Pokemon at least, was conceived in both English and Japanese. They took pains to make sure the names in both languages were memorable to the children of their respective regions. Japanese names are rather standard in most cases or just literal descriptions.
English names are intentionally mostly a play on words. Ash, pulled from Satoshi. Ketchum is a reference to the English catchphrase “Gotta catch ‘em all!” Brock is the Rock Gym leader, Misty (as in rain) is the Water Gym leader, Jessie & James put together is Jesse James, famous outlaw and gang member like the Team Rocket (Rocket Gang in Japanese) duo.
The Pokemon names are usually portmandoes. Squirtle is squirting (water) turtle, Bulbasaur is a bulb (plant) dinosaur, and Charmander is a charring (fire) salamander.
Yes, but *portmanteaus. 😅
When your portmanteau goes commando
Also pretty common for Japanese media at the time (and probably still now?) when it was localised to other languages, especially if they expected it to be consumed by kids. the Final Fantasy games also come to mind as having localised monster names rather than direct phonetic translations.
It’s very unlikely that an English-speaking child in 1998 would have been able to pronounce Zenigame, Hitokage, or Fushigidane, let alone remember them after the game was turned off.
Yes. OP seems to have some knowledge on Japanese and may have forgotten how unintuitive the language is to Germanic/Roman native speakers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky#Translations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_localisation
How would you translate Jabberwocky, which is made up entirely of non-existent words? When you translate “Calle Sangre” do you translate it as blood street or “Sangre street”? How about making a chinese adaptation of sherlock holmes? Do you translate the “baker” in “baker street” if you would translate calle sangre as blood street?
There are many decisions that have to be made when adapting a work for a different language, apparently pokemon made those tradeoffs.
Just as an example that this sort of localisation also happens the other way around: Paw Patrol features Ryder as the human in charge of the crack hero dog outfit. He turned into the rather Japanese ケント or Kento over here. Ryder when turned into katakana is a little too close to “懶惰, 嬾惰 [らんだ, らいだ]: indolence, laziness, sloth, idleness.” And he is a dull smartass but to be fair to the lad he isn’t lazy.
Some more news, although there are lots oc countries using the English name. You also have Germany who always translate things
https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_German_Pokémon_names
You’d be essentially turning Pokemon into a Japanese language class?
It’s far from uncommon for names to be localised, especially for children’s media. Speaking names, pokemon names being prime examples, don’t work if you don’t speak the language they originate in. So if you want to achieve the effect in the translation, you have to find an appropriate word in the target language to convey the meaning.
Edit: I just realised that the term “speaking name” doesn’t seem to exist in English, hah. It’s a (character’s) name that tells you something about the character.
