• Ever thought it'd be cool to have your art, writing, or challenge runs featured on PokéCommunity? Click here for info - we'd love to spotlight your work!
  • Welcome to PokéCommunity! Register now and join one of the best fan communities on the 'net to talk Pokémon and more! We are not affiliated with The Pokémon Company or Nintendo.
    Register

Names that sound and look better in other languages?

Sorry to tell you, but most of the Japanese names sound corny. Come on, Sunkern's Japanese name is Himanuts. Charmenleon is Lizardo. And who can forget Freezer? The Japaneses names aren't better because they are the "originals".

Lizardo.
 
Me2UJus4Free said:
Sorry to tell you, but most of the Japanese names sound corny. Come on, Sunkern's Japanese name is Himanuts. Charmenleon is Lizardo. And who can forget Freezer? The Japaneses names aren't better because they are the "originals".

Lizardo.
Click to expand...

Often you can come up with something that is better than the first name. You could probably come up with names on your own and think they're better than the eng and jp names. Satoshi Tajiri and Ken Sugimori liked the names they gave to their pokemon. Whoever gave the eng names, thought they could do it better. But it's just what they think for themselves. If the pokemon would have the 'best' names, they would have one name for each Pokemon fan or other people involved in pokemon. To avoid getting too many alternative names, I think one should stick to the originals. But of course, you can just nickname the pokemon whatever you want. And if you like the eng names better, you buy the US version of the game. I like the jp names better so I buy the JP version of the game.
There are probably names that I also think are better than the originals, but I will also think that the originals come first and is the real name for that pokemon.
 
I don't think they replaced them because they thought they could do better, but because some sounded too exotic. Hayshigame, Fushigidane, Yorunokoku, ect.

I think arguing that the Japanese names that are essentially English words sound bad isn't good either, though. Of course they'll sound bad to us--it's our word. If a Pokemon's English name was Kaminari or something, that would sound good for us, but for the Japanese it would be "what?" because it's basically named "Thunder." (the equivalent of Zapdos being actually named "Thunder" sounding strange to us). Not that the Japanese names don't have puns that likely sound corny to them, but that we'd miss.

Charmeleon is "Lizard" not "Lizardo" Half-romanizations = no.

~Chibi~
 
Hmm... I know all Pokemon names in English and German (of course).
And I think the most English names sound cooler than the German once.
But I prefer a few names in German, per examples Glumanda (Charmander), Aquana (Vaporeon), Psiana (Espeon), Flemmli (Torchic), Pummeluff (Jigglypuff) etc.
And these are my favorite English names: Tyranitar (Despotar), Clefairy (Pipie), Meowth (Mauzi), Staryu (Sterndu), Seel (Jurob)...

I don´t know the japanese names, so I haven´t got an opinion of this names...
 
But the eng names have english words as well. They are often misspelled to make them different from the acual word. Golem, Mew, Gloom, Persian, Abra, Kadabra, Alakazam, Haunter, Electrode(?), Kabuto(?) are names from words that already exist.
Gastly, Muk, Onix, Koffing, Weezing, Jynx, Unown and Porygon are mispellings of existing words
Seaking and Slowking are combination of two words
Raikou is a japanese word (lightning)
The japanese cannot misspell the words as in english. So, both unknown and unown is announ in japanese.
For instance in the game Legaia they translated 'naito' into 'nighto' even if the word was supposed be be 'night'.
To me, it doesn't matter if the name is directly from a word, wether you misspell it or not. I like the names Fire, Freezer and Thunder.
 
I thought Kabuto was a word, since there is a Magic:the gathering card named Kabuto. Thought it meant something.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top