Well, typically yes - but only if the name is actually in Japanese reading order. Bulbapedia English-ified the name first, so that's not the case here. Sonezaki is his last name :O Masaki is a common first name in nihon, so. The kana for his name, ソネザキ マサキ, certainly seems to indicate this (especially since Sonezaki comes first). Since Pokémon games are always in kana, afaik, due to younger players, a kanji version isn't provided, but I'd expect it to be something like 曽根崎 正樹 (but you could write that first name a couple ways, really, even if you wanted to stay in the tree/wood theme for researcher dudes ... like, say, 松前 or 政木 are perfectly great ways to write Masaki as well.) There's nothing wrong with either Masaki-san or Sonezaki-san though, the former just indicates a higher level of familiarity.
(I was going to call him Sonezaki-san but ... WELL, NOW THAT I KNOW IT'S ACCEPTABLE BRB FUTURE HONORIFICS EVERYWHERE)
(I was going to call him Sonezaki-san but ... WELL, NOW THAT I KNOW IT'S ACCEPTABLE BRB FUTURE HONORIFICS EVERYWHERE)
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