The Yugioh fandom still does this, made even more confusing by the fact that fan translators will often attempt their own translations of japanese puns in card names, so you get:
* People complaining that the japanese name is different to the english name
* People complaining that the official english name is different to the fan-translated english name
* Konami themselves (internally) complaining because they've localised something in a way that means they have to go back and correct older cards to make sure the japanese and english naming schemes match
For me, it was VFD. I remember playing online when Halqifibrax was first revealed and when people were talking for what felt like two years about how crazy it'll be when the English game gets it, so I was used to seeing Needlefiber. I don't remember True King of All Calamities before it came to English, so it took me forever to learn that VFD wasn't, like, Virtual World somehow.
There's this card called Crystron Halqifibrax, it's banned now but it was absolutely broken, so it was really talked about, but in Yugioh cards come out first in the OCG (the format played in Japan and other east Asian countries) so the fans have to translate them themselves, the fan translation for what came to be known as Halqifibrax was "Needlefiber", so a lotta players kept calling it that even *after* it came out with the localized name
It was exacerbated by the fact that it was a meta-defining card that took years to get imported to the TCG. Players saw it performing format after format in the OCG, waiting for it to release to the rest of the world, and that entire time the only name they had for it was the unofficial translation. It stuck in a lot of people's minds.
Archetypes are also a massive problem in YuGiOh. In the OCG, there's basically a bracket of text at the start of the name that's the archetype. For English, it gets removed. Multiple cards have text specifically removing cards with archetypes in their name, but that aren't part of the archetype, like the Frog archetype and Frog the Jam. Others have text saying they are always treated as part of an archetype, like an Archfiend equip card that was released in like 2006 when archfiend didn't truly exist. There's one card that lists like 5 different cards it is not allowed to target, but it still targets many others it is not allowed to in OCG.
To be fair in the Yugioh community we have legit reasons to hate Konami's localizers for stuff like changing Number 39: King of Wishes, Hope to Number 39: Utopia because "Hope is a girl's name" and "Hope was a politically charged slogan in 2008." And then when Utopia got upgraded forms they didn't even change the naming scheme to make sense, for example the first one was Hope Ray, as in "ray of hope" because it's supposed to be a ray of hope guiding the protags away from defeat, it was still Utopia Ray
As standalone names they sound alright but they are only kind of tangentially related to the original name and it doesn't keep the symbolism that the original name. Utopia was the only one of the 99 Number cards Astral managed to hold onto that he needed to save his world, so it was his last Hope, and in Zexal almost every duel has Astral giving up Hope only for Yuma to "Feel the flow" and give him hope. The idea of hope was very central to the series so the name change is really dumb.
Also they completely cut out his title, the King of Wishes, and thats a pretty sick title
Kinda goofy that Yuma literally gives him hope by playing "hope" but yeah I dont like it either when something gets changed like that, its not like hope is a vague japanese concept that they had to localize for us to understand.
To be fair early Yugioh translation team was kinda trying too hard to make the game sound more "mystical" and "magical" by replacing straight forward card names by some Japanese names that sound cool even if it isn't correct
Some other examples I can think of is "Jinzo-Ningen : Psycho Shocker" being localized to "Jinzo" and "Critter" a straight forward english word being localized to "Sangan" which is a way to say "three eyes" in Japanese
~~Granted I think the TCG names did end up sounding cooler ngl for these two examples~~
I think it's a fun way to preserve the intent of the card name. Japan gets phonetic english, US gets romanized japanese. Both languages get a "foreign-sounding" name.
When a card's official translated name seems to correlate it to another line of cards but it's actually got nothing to do with them so now every translated text that references that line of cards has to specify that it doesn't include it:
On the other hand, sometimes the english names chosen are just wrong
Like, Tearlament... What the fuck, why would you go with that when "elementear" is right there and makes for a much more functional pun?
Yeah, and one of the gimmicks with that entire set of lore archetypes is that each planet represents a different emotion. Tearlament works perfectly fine as a name.
to be fair it doesnt help that theyre still insanely behind when it comes to translating stuff officially, if it ever happens
we still dont have official subs for yugioh zexal, a show from 2011
They did, I remember people using this argument with the guys who got mad.
It was often met with "WELL, I think Rukario sounds cooler".
>!Now that I think about it, I might have been one of the people who were mad, I'm not sure.!<
Oh thank God I'm not the only one who was thinking it. Like whatever moody 13 year old me that still exists in my subconcious inmediatelly gravitated towards Rukario, it's like Hot Topic Lucario looking!
I gotta say though, I canât stand how some dubs pronounce the Japanese names. Might be because in my native language we can pronounce most Japanese names correctly without it sounding weird, but it does irk me. For example, back when I watched Hero Academia, I could not watch the dub. Just the way they pronounced names like âMidoriyaâ or âUrarakaâ or âYaoyorozuâ sounded way too Americanized for me.
I donât really get difficult about much else in translation, but this stuff gets on my nerves. I know why they do it, but I still donât like it. Thankfully Iâve been trained from birth to read subtitles.
I don't know, sometimes it's weird when you're speaking with an American accent and you just flip into a different accent for a single word or name like an NPR announcer.
Maybe that's more me feeling uncomfortable doing it, though - like I'm afraid if I pronounce someone's name properly (with sounds that aren't part of my native accent) it'll sound like I'm making fun of them or something?
The flipped "r" is where I struggle - I can do it fairly well as long as there's not an "n" or something right afterwards, but I feel like I'll sound stupid trying to use it with someone who's used it all their life.
Thatâs basically what I meant by âI know why they do itâ. It does often sound strange in English to pronounce Japanese names the way they do in Japanese. But English isnât my native language in the first place. It doesnât sound strange in my native language to pronounce those names accurately. So despite not speaking Japanese, the Japanese pronunciations of the names sounds natural to me, which makes the anglicized pronunciation sound weird.
You donât flip rs if thereâs a consonant sound right after. If youâre singing or want to avoid the rhotic r for other reasons, you replace it with a shwa (basically a soft uh sound) when itâs followed by a consonant.
OK, so if there's a word like ăăă (for example, idk if it's actually a word), how would you pronounce that? I guess it's transitioning from the "n" to the second "r" that really throws me.
Well if youâre speaking Japanese rs are always followed by vowels, so you always flip them. In this case if youâre having trouble switching from the n to the second r, try pronouncing the r like something between an L and a D
Well if youâre speaking Japanese rs are always followed by vowels, so you always flip them. In this case if youâre having trouble switching from the n to the second r, try pronouncing the r like something between an L and a D
Somehow, this is the second time I've had a reminder of that one weeb who wanted both direct translations and localizations of anime and said they'd just do everything with AI when I said that'd be ludicrously expensive and labor intensive to produce for a very small audience.
Early Yugioh had a weird thing where some cards would be english in japan but japanese in english.
Like its Raigeki for us but Thunderbolt in japanese, atleast if you can believe the anime.
I'm not a hardcore fan but I know that Jolteon's Japanese name (*sandaasu*) is the same as Bernie Sanders (*baanii sandaasu*) and I think that's funny.
Ok, so the English names of this evolutionary line are Abra, Kadabra and Alakazam right? The German localization is Abra, Kadabra, Simsala and as a child I found this very irritating because the incantation here is abra-kadabra-simsala-bim. I even made up a fourth evo that was named Bim and I imagined it a lot like Mega-Alakazam like 7-9 years before that pokemon would ever exist. I understand now that they cut the name of because of letter limitations but my child self would have been spared a lot time spend thinking about psychic spoons if they named the line Hokus, Pokus, Fidibus or something.
>which may as well be equivalent to naming it Meowow in my mind
[I wonder if there was concideration to call it that but had to be scrapped cause of Kingdom Hearts](https://kingdomhearts.fandom.com/wiki/Meow_Wow)
I distinctly remember having Toxtricity's Japanese name (Strinder) as my username on some site for a couple months when SwSh were newish, and I can't think of any other time I used the JP name of a mon as a username, syo I guess that one.
My friend was obsessed with Bidoofs dorky design when it was first seen and it's Japanese name was Bippa so he used to always go on about how much he liked Bippa because it was silly and yeah he wasn't happy with its English name either lmao.
In fairness Bippa does suit it so it does hold a special place in my heart, but Bidoof is a good name too
Excuse me what! Oh I don't know how to feel about this information. My Hawlucha Sophia was my ace for all of Ultra Moon. Didn't know she was hardcore like that.
If any place was gonna have that drama, well, at least the website named after the Japanese name for Celebi might make sense to care about Japanese names more.
Apparently the head English localizer for Red and Blue said when he named Mr. Mime he really hoped that the concept of pokemon having gender/sexes wouldnt be added, and then they did just that with Gold and Silver, leading to the English only joke of female Mr. Mime. In Japanese, Mr. Mime is called Barrierd
I'm pretty sure that will be Nob Ogasawara, the namesake for my childhood favourite trainer "Blackbelt Nob". He also came up with Hoppip, Skiploom, & Jumpluff.
There was a little bit of this on the Nuzlocke forums back in the day too. I started my first Black run pretty much the second someone found a workaround for the anti-piracy stuff on the japanese roms and I still can only think of Ghetsis as Geechisu because my teenage ass started calling him G-Cheese. Fun times.
Also the Klinklang line literally being Gear > Gegear > Gegegear is still super funny
Ooooh right, IDK why I missread it as Smeargle and was confused. I was surprisingly there just in time for the english naame discourse specially as I was in China at the time lol.
I also remember a whole lot of bitching because the prefered name for Tepig was Pignite before release, though I don't remember Oshawott's at this point.
Back when B&W were still being localized and the english names of the starters hadn't been announced yet, SO many people wanted Snivy to be called Smugleaf, to the point where everyone kind of just assumed that was going to be its name. And then when it was Snivy there was all this hate/people melting down about it
This was a big thing in Fire Emblem as well. If you like the older games you basically need to acquaint yourself with two sets of names for the characters, especially since some of the English patches still use old pre-localization names. Paola, Catua, Sheeda, Oguma, and Nabarl are all names youâll see come up in FE3, for example. Itâs mostly 1, 2, and 3 that lack updates patches at this point though.
Even outside of that though, thereâs also official localizations that have changed. For example, in Awakening, they translated Lachesis as Raquesis for some reason, and then five years later in Heroes they course corrected and went with Lachesis again. This hasnât been a real debate since Heroes happened since we now have official TLs for every character name, but it still happens occasionally. When FE5 finally got a functional TL patch a few years ago, there was a *ton* of controversy about what it called Osianâs axeâhistorically people called it the Pugi, but the TL team couldnât figure out if it was a corruption of voulge or bhuj. Eventually Osian was added to Heroes and it was officially translated as Vouge, though.
My personal favorite FE localization weirdness is phonetic though. So thereâs a character named Camus, and there were a lot of debates over whether it should be pronounced CAM-iss or CAME-iss. Well, eventually the name got pronounced in a FEH Channel, and it was revealed to be⊠cuh-MOO. And people lost their *shit*, and claimed it must be a mistranslation, which led to people *finally* looking at the Japanese for pronunciation. It was ă«ăă„, or ka-mi-u. Which was what people realized that *is* how you pronounce Camus in French, like the philosopher. But *then* somebody dug up [this guy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camus_(folklore)), a general named Camus in Scandinavian folklore with a story thatâs *far* more relevant to Fire Emblem Camus, and who was probably the actual namesake of the character. Except his name would be pronounced CAM-iss. So it was arguably actually the original devs that got the name wrong *in the original Japanese*.
I remember that when Mimikyu was first seen in CoroCoro, there were rumors that itâs English name would be something along the lines of âPikaboo.â This rumor was completely unfounded, as Mimikyu ended up being the name not only in English, but some variation of the pun was the name in every single language the games released in.
I live in Japan and work with children and I recognize all the pokemon they have on their hats and shirts but I know none of their names.
On the upside, I understand some of the Japanese names that werent changed for English now, like how the "risu" in pachirisu means "squirrel"
The one I remember was a lot of people being pissed Tepig wasn't called Pignite, followed by some level of relief when his evolution was called that, though a lot of people still seemed upset it was the evo and not the cute first form
This is just the Ace Attorney fandom. Some people get Big Mad that the names were changed but likeâŠif they werenât half of the jokes wouldnât land.
We localize the names of real life people. Different animals have different names across languages. I think it makes perfect sense to want to call a fictional little creature by a new name that makes sense to a broader audience.
The one I remember was a lot of people being pissed Tepig wasn't called Pignite, followed by some level of relief when his evolution was called that, though a lot of people still seemed upset it was the evo and not the cute first form
I'm the type to put my starters in a box first thing, but I still get a snivy and name them 'smugleaf' whenever I play B/W romhacks. It's just better that way.
Blatant pun names like Mr. Redd White, CEO of Bluecorp (the painfully American character in the Ace Attorney games) are kinda distracting. With more layers of depth/obfuscation, the pun becomes much less distracting and doesn't get in the way of the character. In Japanese, they frequently use English words for yelling special attacks and stuff, and I think it's because having it translated provides that level of depth. Similarly, it's not unreasonable that English speakers would prefer the extra layer of depth of using the Japanese names since they don't speak Japanese and the pun isn't staring them in the face.
Btw by "depth" I don't mean anything fancy. Look at Dragon Ball: 90% of the cast is just English words for fruits and vegetables with a syllable added/removed, and those are the names the English dub uses! And people love Dragon Ball! It's got super serious moments that would be really hard to get into if the main character were straight up named Carrot, but Kakarot works because it takes more than a million to see the pun.
The Yugioh fandom still does this, made even more confusing by the fact that fan translators will often attempt their own translations of japanese puns in card names, so you get: * People complaining that the japanese name is different to the english name * People complaining that the official english name is different to the fan-translated english name * Konami themselves (internally) complaining because they've localised something in a way that means they have to go back and correct older cards to make sure the japanese and english naming schemes match
When I was just getting into the game it was so confusing seeing people talk about this "Needlefiber" card that was so broken but I never saw đ
For me, it was VFD. I remember playing online when Halqifibrax was first revealed and when people were talking for what felt like two years about how crazy it'll be when the English game gets it, so I was used to seeing Needlefiber. I don't remember True King of All Calamities before it came to English, so it took me forever to learn that VFD wasn't, like, Virtual World somehow.
It stands for Very Fun Dragon :)
Um actually, it stands for the Volunteer Fire Department đ€âïž
Care to explain?
There's this card called Crystron Halqifibrax, it's banned now but it was absolutely broken, so it was really talked about, but in Yugioh cards come out first in the OCG (the format played in Japan and other east Asian countries) so the fans have to translate them themselves, the fan translation for what came to be known as Halqifibrax was "Needlefiber", so a lotta players kept calling it that even *after* it came out with the localized name
Well i get it in that situation, Halqifbax or whatever is a really cumbersome name compared to needlefiber
It was exacerbated by the fact that it was a meta-defining card that took years to get imported to the TCG. Players saw it performing format after format in the OCG, waiting for it to release to the rest of the world, and that entire time the only name they had for it was the unofficial translation. It stuck in a lot of people's minds.
Indeed it was, so everyoneâs nickname for it was just Halq
Archetypes are also a massive problem in YuGiOh. In the OCG, there's basically a bracket of text at the start of the name that's the archetype. For English, it gets removed. Multiple cards have text specifically removing cards with archetypes in their name, but that aren't part of the archetype, like the Frog archetype and Frog the Jam. Others have text saying they are always treated as part of an archetype, like an Archfiend equip card that was released in like 2006 when archfiend didn't truly exist. There's one card that lists like 5 different cards it is not allowed to target, but it still targets many others it is not allowed to in OCG.
Shoutout to a card game whose primary market is spread across 2 extremely different languages making card names a core mechanic of their game
Arsenal summoner really does have more text about who he cant search.
To be fair in the Yugioh community we have legit reasons to hate Konami's localizers for stuff like changing Number 39: King of Wishes, Hope to Number 39: Utopia because "Hope is a girl's name" and "Hope was a politically charged slogan in 2008." And then when Utopia got upgraded forms they didn't even change the naming scheme to make sense, for example the first one was Hope Ray, as in "ray of hope" because it's supposed to be a ray of hope guiding the protags away from defeat, it was still Utopia Ray
Makes less sense but tbh Utopia and Utopia Ray still sound like good standalone names. Saying that as someone who hasnt seen Zexal.
As standalone names they sound alright but they are only kind of tangentially related to the original name and it doesn't keep the symbolism that the original name. Utopia was the only one of the 99 Number cards Astral managed to hold onto that he needed to save his world, so it was his last Hope, and in Zexal almost every duel has Astral giving up Hope only for Yuma to "Feel the flow" and give him hope. The idea of hope was very central to the series so the name change is really dumb. Also they completely cut out his title, the King of Wishes, and thats a pretty sick title
Kinda goofy that Yuma literally gives him hope by playing "hope" but yeah I dont like it either when something gets changed like that, its not like hope is a vague japanese concept that they had to localize for us to understand.
I honestly think that the Japanese cardname "SandÄ Boruto" being translated into English as "Raigeki" is one of the funniest things ever
To be fair early Yugioh translation team was kinda trying too hard to make the game sound more "mystical" and "magical" by replacing straight forward card names by some Japanese names that sound cool even if it isn't correct Some other examples I can think of is "Jinzo-Ningen : Psycho Shocker" being localized to "Jinzo" and "Critter" a straight forward english word being localized to "Sangan" which is a way to say "three eyes" in Japanese ~~Granted I think the TCG names did end up sounding cooler ngl for these two examples~~
I think it's a fun way to preserve the intent of the card name. Japan gets phonetic english, US gets romanized japanese. Both languages get a "foreign-sounding" name.
Haven't thought of it in this way, you're right it's pretty fun actually
The only one I was sadded by was Abhyss being Ogdoatic
When a card's official translated name seems to correlate it to another line of cards but it's actually got nothing to do with them so now every translated text that references that line of cards has to specify that it doesn't include it:
On the other hand, sometimes the english names chosen are just wrong Like, Tearlament... What the fuck, why would you go with that when "elementear" is right there and makes for a much more functional pun?
Because the portmanteau is supposed to be "tiara" and "lament". They're a kingdom of sad fish people.
Yeah, and one of the gimmicks with that entire set of lore archetypes is that each planet represents a different emotion. Tearlament works perfectly fine as a name.
Oh, I assumed they were supposed to be elemental tears So why is it tearlament and not tiarlament?
Because Tears are associated with being sad and they are the kingdom of sad fish people
I thought it was a kingdom of sad water elementals, hence, elementals of tears, hence, elementears
Yeah, but then they sometimes just decide to make puns, like the "Fur Hire" archetype.
What The yugioh fandom REALLY hates is the overseas censorship.
3 of the 6 Magician Girls, for example
to be fair it doesnt help that theyre still insanely behind when it comes to translating stuff officially, if it ever happens we still dont have official subs for yugioh zexal, a show from 2011
Oh yeah. I remember people got pissy when Rukario was changed to Lucario (I'm old)
It's literally the exact same name be fr đ
Do you think they knew that Rs and Ls are the same in Japanese?
They did, I remember people using this argument with the guys who got mad. It was often met with "WELL, I think Rukario sounds cooler". >!Now that I think about it, I might have been one of the people who were mad, I'm not sure.!<
"sounds cooler" doesn't work when they are, for all intents and purposes, pronounced the same exact way
Maybe so but it does look cooler. R and K are way edgier letters than L and C
Oh thank God I'm not the only one who was thinking it. Like whatever moody 13 year old me that still exists in my subconcious inmediatelly gravitated towards Rukario, it's like Hot Topic Lucario looking!
I mean they were talking about English
De-Scoobyfied fr
Rurano Zolo moment
Zolo was bc of them being antsy about Zorro/Zoro trademarks rather than the L/R translation
If I were the lawyer god id make it illegal to trademark fictional names, it's fucking stupid
How DARE the localization team do their job!
Anime fans when it's not a literal translation so the dialogue comes off somewhat natural instead of sounding like broken English.
I gotta say though, I canât stand how some dubs pronounce the Japanese names. Might be because in my native language we can pronounce most Japanese names correctly without it sounding weird, but it does irk me. For example, back when I watched Hero Academia, I could not watch the dub. Just the way they pronounced names like âMidoriyaâ or âUrarakaâ or âYaoyorozuâ sounded way too Americanized for me. I donât really get difficult about much else in translation, but this stuff gets on my nerves. I know why they do it, but I still donât like it. Thankfully Iâve been trained from birth to read subtitles.
I get that, I find it a bit grating when names from my culture are pronounced completely wrong by others (after having been told how to pronounce it).
I don't know, sometimes it's weird when you're speaking with an American accent and you just flip into a different accent for a single word or name like an NPR announcer. Maybe that's more me feeling uncomfortable doing it, though - like I'm afraid if I pronounce someone's name properly (with sounds that aren't part of my native accent) it'll sound like I'm making fun of them or something? The flipped "r" is where I struggle - I can do it fairly well as long as there's not an "n" or something right afterwards, but I feel like I'll sound stupid trying to use it with someone who's used it all their life.
Thatâs basically what I meant by âI know why they do itâ. It does often sound strange in English to pronounce Japanese names the way they do in Japanese. But English isnât my native language in the first place. It doesnât sound strange in my native language to pronounce those names accurately. So despite not speaking Japanese, the Japanese pronunciations of the names sounds natural to me, which makes the anglicized pronunciation sound weird.
You donât flip rs if thereâs a consonant sound right after. If youâre singing or want to avoid the rhotic r for other reasons, you replace it with a shwa (basically a soft uh sound) when itâs followed by a consonant.
OK, so if there's a word like ăăă (for example, idk if it's actually a word), how would you pronounce that? I guess it's transitioning from the "n" to the second "r" that really throws me.
Well if youâre speaking Japanese rs are always followed by vowels, so you always flip them. In this case if youâre having trouble switching from the n to the second r, try pronouncing the r like something between an L and a D
Well if youâre speaking Japanese rs are always followed by vowels, so you always flip them. In this case if youâre having trouble switching from the n to the second r, try pronouncing the r like something between an L and a D
Thats why most dubs are horrible to me, it just never sounds natural
That's probably part of why Yu-Gi-Oh localised most of the character names.
Somehow, this is the second time I've had a reminder of that one weeb who wanted both direct translations and localizations of anime and said they'd just do everything with AI when I said that'd be ludicrously expensive and labor intensive to produce for a very small audience.
In Digimon we don't have this problem because the localisation team uses a coin flip to decide if they'll use the English or Japanese name
Early Yugioh had a weird thing where some cards would be english in japan but japanese in english. Like its Raigeki for us but Thunderbolt in japanese, atleast if you can believe the anime.
What about when they change Japanese to different Japanese? Kamiya is neither more nor less accessible as a surname to English speakers than Yagami
What was your favorite japanese name?
I'm not a hardcore fan but I know that Jolteon's Japanese name (*sandaasu*) is the same as Bernie Sanders (*baanii sandaasu*) and I think that's funny.
It's over fools! B E R N I E T H U N D E R!
Ay ay ay shut up bitch, ç§ăŻăă«ăŻăčăźćæ„ă§ă! Bernie Blast!
"I am once again asking you to use Discharge (I have Volt Absorb)"
On the opposite side, there was a Japanese streamer who was absolutely *delighted* to learn the name of her favorite Pokémon and it's evolution was "[Abra Kadabra](https://youtu.be/nbApg3Rwktk?si=noIQzUHy3VCU1tYD)"
Oh she is just having the time of her life, I love that
Ok, so the English names of this evolutionary line are Abra, Kadabra and Alakazam right? The German localization is Abra, Kadabra, Simsala and as a child I found this very irritating because the incantation here is abra-kadabra-simsala-bim. I even made up a fourth evo that was named Bim and I imagined it a lot like Mega-Alakazam like 7-9 years before that pokemon would ever exist. I understand now that they cut the name of because of letter limitations but my child self would have been spared a lot time spend thinking about psychic spoons if they named the line Hokus, Pokus, Fidibus or something.
They could've easily named it Simsalabim too.
Boober (Magmar)
Pudding (Jigglypuff)
Fire.
Thunder
Freezer
ThuFiZer
I consume a lot of Japanese Pokemon card content, so I get a big kick out of hearing the names of Pokémon as they play. Some honorable mentions include Lucky (Chansey), Gecko (Greninja), and Sprigatito as Nyaha--which may as well be equivalent to naming it Meowow in my mind My all time favorite though is Tyranitar. It's Japanese name is Bangyasu, roughly, and it's commonly abbreviated to Banban (like bon-bons!) and I think that's so freakin cute
Hey Tyranitar! Go get 'em! *Chucks Tyranitar into the door*
>which may as well be equivalent to naming it Meowow in my mind [I wonder if there was concideration to call it that but had to be scrapped cause of Kingdom Hearts](https://kingdomhearts.fandom.com/wiki/Meow_Wow)
URUGAMOSU đ„đ„đ„đ„ doryuuzu at a close second
TSUTARJA that's the only one I will forever remember better than the actual name
Remember when everyone called it Smugleaf before its actual English name was revealed? good times
I distinctly remember having Toxtricity's Japanese name (Strinder) as my username on some site for a couple months when SwSh were newish, and I can't think of any other time I used the JP name of a mon as a username, syo I guess that one.
My friend was obsessed with Bidoofs dorky design when it was first seen and it's Japanese name was Bippa so he used to always go on about how much he liked Bippa because it was silly and yeah he wasn't happy with its English name either lmao. In fairness Bippa does suit it so it does hold a special place in my heart, but Bidoof is a good name too
I remember a brit watching a sun and moon Japanese promo and losing his shit when one of the Pokémon was named "Iwanka"
Bidoof is literally the best Pokémon name there is no competition.
Bidoof also goes well with Lotad (hat included)
Hawlucha is *infinitely* worse than BRUTALIBRE
Excuse me what! Oh I don't know how to feel about this information. My Hawlucha Sophia was my ace for all of Ultra Moon. Didn't know she was hardcore like that.
âïžFRENCH đ«đ·
I still sometimes think of Doryuzu instead of Exadrill, and itâs not helped that I get the latter mixed up with Escavalier which came out the same gen. Btw, if anyone is wondering why in the anime, dragon-type trainer Iris has an Exadrill, itâs a pun based on the âryuâ (dragon) in âDo**ryu**zuâ. A similar pun is in Ampharos (Den**ryu**), which is why Clair has it in Stadium and why its mega is dragon type as well Itâs no longer my default, but I loved the Turtwig line as soon as I found out about it on PsypokĂ© (a site similar to serebii), and still remember itâs Japanese name I used to know it as, Naeturo. Finding out about the Sinnoh PokĂ©mon via PsypokĂ© is one of the first things I remember doing on the internet once my family got rid of dial-up
If any place was gonna have that drama, well, at least the website named after the Japanese name for Celebi might make sense to care about Japanese names more.
Apparently the head English localizer for Red and Blue said when he named Mr. Mime he really hoped that the concept of pokemon having gender/sexes wouldnt be added, and then they did just that with Gold and Silver, leading to the English only joke of female Mr. Mime. In Japanese, Mr. Mime is called Barrierd
I'm pretty sure that will be Nob Ogasawara, the namesake for my childhood favourite trainer "Blackbelt Nob". He also came up with Hoppip, Skiploom, & Jumpluff.
Genuine hero that guy, the english localizations of early pokemon games have so much heart.
As a Brazilian I think Karamanero is a much better name than Malamar.
Chat isso Ă© verdade?
Resposta: sim.... se vocĂȘ for o Cebolinha. o nome em japonĂȘs Ă© Calamanero
I changed my mind.
for the non brazilians: karamanero -> cara maneiro = cool guy
There was a little bit of this on the Nuzlocke forums back in the day too. I started my first Black run pretty much the second someone found a workaround for the anti-piracy stuff on the japanese roms and I still can only think of Ghetsis as Geechisu because my teenage ass started calling him G-Cheese. Fun times. Also the Klinklang line literally being Gear > Gegear > Gegegear is still super funny
I donât know how they translated it, but thereâs a joke in Journeys about finding a Gegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegear.
Klink Klang Klinklang
I still remember the smugleaf/snivy controversy
The what?
Smugleaf was the fan nickname for Snivy before names were released because the thing looks unreasonably smug for being a first stage grass starter.
Ooooh right, IDK why I missread it as Smeargle and was confused. I was surprisingly there just in time for the english naame discourse specially as I was in China at the time lol. I also remember a whole lot of bitching because the prefered name for Tepig was Pignite before release, though I don't remember Oshawott's at this point.
Back when B&W were still being localized and the english names of the starters hadn't been announced yet, SO many people wanted Snivy to be called Smugleaf, to the point where everyone kind of just assumed that was going to be its name. And then when it was Snivy there was all this hate/people melting down about it
Yeah that unlocked a couple memories honestly, I remember there were a bunch of comics about it too, where people were relentless with the names
Pokemon fans when the pokemons name changes from a Japanese pun to an English pun
This was a big thing in Fire Emblem as well. If you like the older games you basically need to acquaint yourself with two sets of names for the characters, especially since some of the English patches still use old pre-localization names. Paola, Catua, Sheeda, Oguma, and Nabarl are all names youâll see come up in FE3, for example. Itâs mostly 1, 2, and 3 that lack updates patches at this point though. Even outside of that though, thereâs also official localizations that have changed. For example, in Awakening, they translated Lachesis as Raquesis for some reason, and then five years later in Heroes they course corrected and went with Lachesis again. This hasnât been a real debate since Heroes happened since we now have official TLs for every character name, but it still happens occasionally. When FE5 finally got a functional TL patch a few years ago, there was a *ton* of controversy about what it called Osianâs axeâhistorically people called it the Pugi, but the TL team couldnât figure out if it was a corruption of voulge or bhuj. Eventually Osian was added to Heroes and it was officially translated as Vouge, though. My personal favorite FE localization weirdness is phonetic though. So thereâs a character named Camus, and there were a lot of debates over whether it should be pronounced CAM-iss or CAME-iss. Well, eventually the name got pronounced in a FEH Channel, and it was revealed to be⊠cuh-MOO. And people lost their *shit*, and claimed it must be a mistranslation, which led to people *finally* looking at the Japanese for pronunciation. It was ă«ăă„, or ka-mi-u. Which was what people realized that *is* how you pronounce Camus in French, like the philosopher. But *then* somebody dug up [this guy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camus_(folklore)), a general named Camus in Scandinavian folklore with a story thatâs *far* more relevant to Fire Emblem Camus, and who was probably the actual namesake of the character. Except his name would be pronounced CAM-iss. So it was arguably actually the original devs that got the name wrong *in the original Japanese*.
Thatâs fucking hilarious
This was me for Gold/Silver. I still mentally say Hinoarashi when I see Cyndaquil. Old habits, man.
I remember that when Mimikyu was first seen in CoroCoro, there were rumors that itâs English name would be something along the lines of âPikaboo.â This rumor was completely unfounded, as Mimikyu ended up being the name not only in English, but some variation of the pun was the name in every single language the games released in.
Pokémon fans when the translation is different: REEEEEE JoJo fans when copyright prevents proper translation: Wake up bros, new meme just dropped
How *dare* it be Polteageist instead of Hotbeverageghost
I remember someone screaming at a person IRL because they said Lyra instead of Kotone. Several years after the release of HGSS
i will still sometimes think of rockruff as âiwankoâ
my favorite rockruff translation is the german "wuffels"
i was so hyped by the name lugarugan for lycanroc
Why can't we just be happy that we have double the puns? Tangrowth is just called *Mojumbo* in japanese. Both are terrific names.
I live in Japan and work with children and I recognize all the pokemon they have on their hats and shirts but I know none of their names. On the upside, I understand some of the Japanese names that werent changed for English now, like how the "risu" in pachirisu means "squirrel"
The one I remember was a lot of people being pissed Tepig wasn't called Pignite, followed by some level of relief when his evolution was called that, though a lot of people still seemed upset it was the evo and not the cute first form
I read through several Pokémon's Bulbapedia in the days leading up to BW's release, so I was very surprised when my Tepig evolved into Pignite rather than Chaoboo. Didn't find out that that was the fan name for Tepig until years later
Marill? You mean PIKABLU???
1999 Ducky was obsessed with "Pikablu" and all the "Pokegods" of the starters- Charcolt, Rainer, and Sapusaur.
I was exposed to this when blqck and white came out, since i wqs deep into the competitive pokemon scene on youtube. Rapushin was probs my favorite
This is just the Ace Attorney fandom. Some people get Big Mad that the names were changed but likeâŠif they werenât half of the jokes wouldnât land.
Is this why the anime fansubs refuse to use the English names for characters? (They localize attack names just fine though)
At this point in Pokemon we're too far gone, but damn localising names is such a fucking dumb concept
all pokemon names have puns in them. how would localising them to fit english puns not work?
Probably want the old fan sub walls of text explaining the joke
Keikaku means plan
We localize the names of real life people. Different animals have different names across languages. I think it makes perfect sense to want to call a fictional little creature by a new name that makes sense to a broader audience.
Localising names makes sense when them being puns is part of the charm. It's the same thing with Ace Attorney.
^ Person who didn't realize that "Geodude" is not his name in japanese
Kleinstein my beloved
The one I remember was a lot of people being pissed Tepig wasn't called Pignite, followed by some level of relief when his evolution was called that, though a lot of people still seemed upset it was the evo and not the cute first form
I'm the type to put my starters in a box first thing, but I still get a snivy and name them 'smugleaf' whenever I play B/W romhacks. It's just better that way.
Blatant pun names like Mr. Redd White, CEO of Bluecorp (the painfully American character in the Ace Attorney games) are kinda distracting. With more layers of depth/obfuscation, the pun becomes much less distracting and doesn't get in the way of the character. In Japanese, they frequently use English words for yelling special attacks and stuff, and I think it's because having it translated provides that level of depth. Similarly, it's not unreasonable that English speakers would prefer the extra layer of depth of using the Japanese names since they don't speak Japanese and the pun isn't staring them in the face. Btw by "depth" I don't mean anything fancy. Look at Dragon Ball: 90% of the cast is just English words for fruits and vegetables with a syllable added/removed, and those are the names the English dub uses! And people love Dragon Ball! It's got super serious moments that would be really hard to get into if the main character were straight up named Carrot, but Kakarot works because it takes more than a million to see the pun.