Wikipedia say that the game moves your character info in with wild pokemon. I don't buy this.
If you do heaps of experimenting, the Old Man is actually a Pokemon. Also if you mod Pokemon Yellow so cinnibar island doesn't contain any pokemon and that you can fly at the begginning of the game then listen up.
In pallet town, walk to the grass so oak stops you and battles Pikachu, if you modded oak to release you straight away then fly to cinnibar island and start surfing (mod needed).
As you will see, MissingNO. does not appear, thus prooving Wikipedia wrong (WOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!).
you clearly don't understand this at all. here's how it really works:
the strip of shoreline on cinnabar is a glitch, as is the less popular strip of shoreline on seafoam islands. they programmed it to allow pokemon to attack you, but they didn't program what pokemon could attack. this means that if you go straight from one sight to there, your area will remain, allowing the same pokemon to attack (hence the safari zone pokemon). however, the old man has to reset all of the settings in the game character to allow him to be in your position, which they fixed in yellow to make it just like a video clip. they assumed this would be okay when they programmed it, because the glitch wouldn't take hold, since you would walk into a new area and the pokemon to run into would be reset. but when you go to cinnabar, it's not reset, allowing you to run into the glitch pokemon, and pokemon higher than lv. 100. got it? good.
now, as far as changing your name goes: yes, it affects the pokemon you run into. not in most of the game, but it does affect those glitches. it will affect the levels of missingno. and mblock, but those two always show up. it also affects the levels of the pokemon above lv. 100, and effects which pokemon there are to attack you. if you put the right letters in your name, you can run into almost any pokemon. my friend happened to get his to give him lv. 146 mewtwo, 128 missingno, and 140 golbat, whereas mine gave me lv. 145 snorlax, 183 bulbasaur, and 125 hypno, with a level 140 missingno. there are usually only two levels of missingno, the one you get through the characters in your name, and 0. go to any search engine, and you can typically find out how to calculate the pokemon you'll run into.