Naming!

[cheyinka]

So I was curious about how other people name their Pokémon. I've had little luck getting anything nicknamed off the GTS or Wonder Trade, even with asking for a nickname in the message box in X. On the other hand, I see people elsewhere giving their Pokémon really clever names, while I end up usually having a clever name for my starter and then just going with boring things like "Grassasaurus" for Bulbasaur or "Fairy-Gem ♦" for my Carbink.

What do the rest of you do? :)

(the Bellsprout I carry in my Pokéwalker is named Leafy Belle; I can't decide if that's clever or boring.)

Comments

[caterfree10]

I tend to name mine after characters in my fandoms. I have a lot of Homestuck ones this time around (and kind of ended up with two Feferis OOPSIE - might rename the one Meenah tho), though ofc others still make appearances like FLCL, Final Fantasy (particularly VII - my Aegishield is legit named "Buster Sword"), some RPers and other internet users I knew/were familiar with, and a bunch more sources. :Bb

[lazulisong]

either fandoms or stupid puns. I named my first Skiddo Skittles kind of randomly and got an HA from my sister that I made her name Snickers. My Bulbasaurs are all named after vegetables, so I know I've sent off a Leek and a Asparagus to Wonder Trade. Eevees get people names so I just sent off an Espeon named Walter because his stats were so terrible.

[cheyinka]

If I ever try breeding a grass-type (that isn't also a bug, because ick), I will have to name the rejects after vegetables! (My box of reject Yanma are named after letters of the Greek alphabet.)

[fujicori]

Theme naming. What kind of theme I use isn't consistent (characters from X show, puns, abstract concepts...), but my main team will always have a unified theme to its naming.

[starstreaker]

I've only recently started nick-naming them. I tried a bit with the Game Boy version of Red way back in the day, but it was hard to tell who was who in the PC, and I could not remember all the nick-names, so I constantly lost track of who was in what box.

It stayed that way all the way up to my X Nuzlocke Blind run, in which I named them all after candy (or some other sugary treat). Chespin is Peppermint, Pidgey is Coocolate, Lucarion is Ribbon (his Mega-Forme head tails reminded me of those Christmas Ribbon candies), Tyrunt is Jawbreaker, Oddish is Gumdrop, Ledyba is Buttercup (her spots), and stuff like that. It was a lot of fun, and much easier now since you can see their exact sprite when you have them boxed

[outstretched]

Naming them after candies is a really cute idea! Buttercup is such an adorable name for Ledyba ;A;

[albatrosswing]

The weird thing is, I name them after ppl I know. I remember once my sister and I named our pokes after food. (fire red/leaf green lol)

[tyger]

It depends who I'm playing as! I don't... really play as myself? Which is maybe weird, but it's fun for me; I tend to build and name teams after canon-mates, usually, but sometimes it's just whatever I think $character would do. :3

[cheyinka]

That's how I generally have the starter matching the trainer name, but then I never end up really having a final team (except that the starter always comes along)...

[tyger]

*snerk* Well, a lot of the time I go oh hey that's totally $character, and make a team based around that, rather than the other way around? Yeah. Probably not the most effective way of choosing stuff, but you know.

[cheyinka]

I should do that! Odds are good I will get Z or X' or whatever, and I should really do that with that game.

[outstretched]

I don't play as me either—I always try to "play as the PC," for example as Ethan in HGSS, etc. I'm glad I'm not the only one. XD

[soc_puppet]

I've been trying to name my starters as cleverly as possible. In Black/White 2, I named my Tepig "Luchaboar" and my Snivy "Vineglory". (I couldn't come up with something I deemed clever enough for Oshawott, so I just called him Riptide.) This time I started off with Froakie, and since I knew he was eventually going to be a ninja-frog, I gave him Generic Boy Ninja Name: Sasuke. If my Froakie had been female, I'd have struggled to remember the Generic Girl Ninja Name, and then accidentally named her Kagome instead. (FTR: It's "Mikage".)

In Diamond, I named my Chimchar "Goku" because he totally ends up being a fighting monkey with a limiter ring. If it'd been female, I'd've named her after that one gal that's essentially female!Goku in Saiyuki and whose name currently escapes me. I can't for the life of me recall what I named my Piplup in Platinum, especially since it ended up languishing in my PC.

I don't recall naming my starters in HG/SS anything particularly clever, though I do remember calling my Sunkern "Sunglad" after the artist of a song I heard on the local college radio station. Oh, and my Heracross I called "Smashley" after Smashley Simpson on Whip It :Db She served me quite well ♥

Eevees I tend to name after geneticists - mostly Rosalind Franklin, Watson, and Crick, actually; I should look up more geneticists :P And eliminate Watson and Crick, while I'm at it, because they were assholes to Franklin.

I guess I usually try to go for puns? If I got a Chespin I could name, I'd likely call it Chesknight; possibly Keladry if it were female, because Tamora Pierce fuck yeah. My Diggersby is "Usagi" because it's a bunny and it sure as hell didn't look like an "Usako" after it evolved. My Vivillon is "Funfetti", because I'd used Confetti on two previous Scatterbugs that didn't have the ability I wanted and now I don't want to change it.

My Dedenne is "Denise" because it was the best thing I could come up with at the time. If I think on it longer I'll probably come up with something I like better, but I'll skip that for now. My red, yellow, and white Flabebe are Chinensis, Foetida, and Gigantea respectively, because Marimite. My Noivern is "Sonia" because it seemed like a feminine version of "sonic". My Doublade is "Honor" because whenever I read the "hone" part of "Honedge", that's how my brain wanted to complete the word.

Volbeat and Illumise I usually name Kei and Hotaru respectively, because apparently those are both pronunciations of the word "firefly" in Japanese? IDK, I could be getting that totally wrong, and if so I blame the former entirely on TokyoPop.

My Nosepass is "Gesundheit", though damned if I spelled that correctly. I called my Sligoo "Torg", and my Binacle "Knuckles". I finally had enough character spaces, so I named my Snorlax "RipVanWinkle". My Beartic is "Ioric". My Phantump is "Treevor". My Bergmite is "Bergit". My Heatmor is "Aunt Eta". I have a pair of Lairon named L'airon (because France apparently) and Orenie (because ore, get it?). My Electrode is "Electrodude" and my Geodude is "Geodudette", 'cuz it's female.

I've got a female Mime Jr named "Kate" for reasons, and an Inkay named "Squiddle". My Sableye is "Cabochon" and my Carbink is "Carbunkle". My Absol is "Lucienne", because Absol Lucienne and also it's a girl so I couldn't call it Lucian. I usually name my female Burmy "Dirtbag," "Trashbag," and "Leafbag," depending on what form I want to evolve them into.

I tried to name my female Pancham "Asuka" after the titual character in Hana no Asuka-gumi, but apparently that's a forbidden word for some reason? So is "Poof" (what I tried to call my Swirlix before it wouldn't let me, because it's puffy and magical), but then I managed to remember that it's a gay slur in the UK, so at least that one I get. If anyone has any explanation over the Asuka thing, though, I'd love to know.

...Yeah. I name things a lot. Though somewhat less so now, since I've seen so many requests on the GTS for "No nicknames" :(

[cheyinka]

The "no nicknames" thing is what prompted me to ask for nicknames - I had somehow not realized that the message box could be used for that. (But, as I said, generally no luck on that front.)

[soc_puppet]

That's a bummer :/ I've gotten at least three with nicknames off the top of my head (though one was a completely tasteless nickname that I traded off as soon as I could).

Next time we're both on, I could trade you something with a nickname?

[rosehiptea]

I have no idea why certain names are blocked. I tried to name one of my Pokemon Viola and I couldn't. I don't know if it's because there's a character named that in the game or what. (I didn't know about the game character when I tried to name it.)

[outstretched]

P.S. - "Viol" is a rude word in French, which is why you can't name things "Violet" either ;_;

[rosehiptea]

Ah, I had no idea. Now I know. Thanks.

[cheyinka]

It's the same reason you can't name a plant "Thorny" or an Oddish "Weed Pokémon"; anything potentially offensive is out. (Though "420 Erryday" is just fine, and I've gotten some gross ones through Wonder Trade that I straight-up released so I wasn't the cause of anyone else seeing them.)

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_censored_words_in_Generation_V

[soc_puppet]

Yeah; I've been scouring the GTS for Scatterbug or Vivillon forms I don't have yet, and there's this asshat in there who made a comment using the word "f*g" but spelled with ph instead of f. Disgusted? You bet I am!

I've gotten some gross ones through Wonder Trade that I straight-up released so I wasn't the cause of anyone else seeing them.

That's brilliant. Totally doing that if I ever get a terrible name again.

[cheyinka]

In the wild, the other Pokémon won't know their nickname (since only trainers see nicknames), and if they get caught by another trainer, it'll just prompt for a nickname! Problem solved! (why yes I may feel bad about releasing them even though they are not real animals and I know that)

[acaciaonnastik]

Most of the ones I catch just to have them go unnamed, but the ones I intend to have on my main team tend to get named with a gods-and-heroes theme. I also have a few "standard" nicknames that I use. If I can get my hands on a female Absol, she will be named Ksandra, and my main flyer usually is called Richtofen. This is because I'm an enormous dork.

[babycharmander]

I mostly just go with whatever comes to mind--sometimes it's puns, sometimes it's adjectives, sometimes it's real names... sometimes it's special things. Like, in Y, I named my Charmander "Charcolt" (and if I had a Bulbasaur it would be "Sapusaur" and a Squirtle would be "Rainer") because THAT IS WHAT THE MEGA-EVOLUTIONS ARE AND NO-ONE WILL CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE. And back when I got White 2, I caught a Magnemite early on, and, since I was on a Portal kick (and still am), I caved and named him Wheatley and he became one of the strongest Pokemon on my team.

I also have these two Pokemon all the way from my first playthrough of FireRed and I keep moving them up to the new games--Esther the Charizard (named after a Charizard character of mine) and an unnamed Dragonite. But when talking about them, I usually call them Lady Esther and Lord Dragonite, because they're very old and very special to me.

Anyway, I have done name themes a few times. In my first SoulSilver run I gave all my Pokemon Biblical names (Joseph the Typhlosion, Silas the Dunsparce, Anna the Ampharos, Jael the Slowbro, Rahab the Butterfree, and Solomon the Victreebel), resulting in a LOT of obscure names being used for hatchlings. If you ever got a Charmander with a Hebrew name from the GTS, that was probably one of mine. In White, I named all of my Pokemon after literary characters! I had Snowball the Emboar, Dantes the Braviary, Mercedes the Eelectross, and... gosh I can't remember the other ones, but most of them were characters from The Count of Monte Cristo. XD;;

I wanna say I did another naming theme once but I don't remember what it was. But there you are.

[rosehiptea]

I nickname anything I'm planning on keeping but I'm not terribly creative about it. My starter is named after my favorite musician and my Umbreon is named after one of his bandmates. I also use fandom names a lot -- my Lucario is Sokka and the last time I had a girl Lucario she was Katniss.

Sometimes I actually nickname things "Bob" or "Fred" because it makes as much sense as anything else.

The other day on Wonder Trade I got a Drifloon named IMMA BALLON and cracked up laughing. I also got a female Houndour on the GTS which was named Persephone, which I love and is a much better nickname than anything I could come up with. But if I know for sure I'm trading something away I don't usually nickname it. (I would if it was on the GTS and the person specified though!)

Though I will confess I traded a Stunfisk I named EVIL FISHY which I should probably be ashamed of.

[outstretched]

omg evil fishy is the best though. I'm so amused when people give away pokemon with silly nicknames.

[cheyinka]

There is no reason to be ashamed of that name :D

I may name a Beldum "CATCH RATE 3". (Except I am never going to try to catch a wild one ever again. That's what the GTS and breeding the one I have in Black2 is for.)

[outstretched]

I nickname every single one of my pokemon, even the ones I never intend to use! I tend to name the pokemon in my team after greco-roman mythology, so gods or heroes; my Samurott is Triton, my Sawsbuck is Pomona, Crobat is Tethys (and I have a zubat in the box who has her husband's name, Peleus). I always end up with a geodude named Herculea, somehow; same with ampharos, I always end up with one named Ptolemy (he designed the Alexandria lighthouse). If it's not a pokemon I think I'm going to become super close to, then I give it whatever pops into my head: usually normal names like Jeremiah or Nara, but sometimes flowers or silly things, like I have a basculin named Lunch, and my Whimsicott is named Darwin because cottonee is 90% beard and whimsicott isn't much better, honestly.Sometimes I'll name pokemon after my friends, if it's a pokemon I know they like. If I know I'm going to trade them to someone in particular, then I'll usually give them a name that I think they'd like, or something related to their interests!

P.S. I think leafy belle is a super cute name!!

[cheyinka]

Mmmmm. Lunch. (Now I want fish for dinner. Argh!)

[fiones]

My X Pokemon are named after characters and actors from Classic Doctor Who to commemorate the discovery of 9 Patrick Troughton episodes the week before XY came out. :')

[abarero]

I often have a theme I set at the beginning of the game and all my pokemon end up named with that theme. Sometimes it's fandom related (HeartGold was Avatar:TLA characters), sometimes it's location based (Unova got AMERICAN names like Freedom and Washington) and I often default to mythology if anything else. XY is one I'm going with European Mythology themes for.

[fairiewings]

I always name my pokes. I didn't know about..
asking for a nickname in the message box
I think naming your pokemon, and sending them off in a Wonder trade is good.

As for naming goes, I remember my sister anf I nsming them after foods... stuff like that.. but, mostly I name them after real people y'know?

Sam