A thought about the Pokedex...

[Iveechan]

"Pika" means "lighting" and "Chu" means "mouse". Therefore, Pikachu is a Lightning Mouse.

Nice try. Nezumi is mouse (or rat) and lightning is... something. But pika definately translates to spark*le* and chu is squeak, not the actual animal mouse. It's like if we had a Pokemon named Bow-wow-something, bow wow would be a dog noise, not the actual dog.

 

[charizard_maa]

I think A_C_Moon is right about the Pikachu thing. I read in a mag that that how they came up with Pikachu's name.

They come up with the classifications by how americans will see it. I think they were targeting little kids to young teens when it first came out so they just made the classifcations to relate to things they know. Like Sand Mouse. I would find that hard to understand at age 11. If they told me it was an alemdo then I understand Sandshrew more better.