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.
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.