HG/SS Names

[Jax]

Reading Serebii recently (gasp, shock, wut), I came across the list of the English names of each of the characters. And by "came across," I mean "read the front page and sort of stopped there." But in any case, yes. What does everyone think of them?

For the sake of ease because I know a number of you probably aren't Googling this yourself, the new names and my personal brief thoughts on each of them.

Male Trainer: Ethan
On the one hand, I can sort of understand that he'd get renamed from Gold because, well, it'd match the fact that they sort of replaced his counterpart with that one new girl you may or may not have heard of. That and he's just not called Gold in the Japanese version, so I really saw this coming. Still, I can't help but wonder why they felt like they had to do this. I mean, the kid is clearly Gold, ported in from the old games. They redesigned Red when they ported him into the remake series, but they let him keep his name. Then again, I sort of like his new Japanese name, although... Ethan? Really? Where did they get that name?

Female Trainer: Lyra
It's pretty, and it goes with the "let's name the kids after sounds or musical instruments" theme they've got going on in the Japanese version.

Rocket Executive #1: Proton
This guy was Lance, and I thank those clever kids over at PUSA for recognizing how stupid it'd be if they tried to keep the name in the English version when we've already got a Lance running around. However, I'm a little disappointed that they didn't keep the theme that the Japanese version had going on, where everyone was named after actual American rockets. (As in, the literal kind.) I mean, that was pretty flipping clever of the Japanese to do that, and it's not like we have a limited number of rocket-themed names to offer.

Granted, the English names are still rockets (European ones, according to a little digging), but still. It would've been really badass to have canon characters named Athena, Lambda, and Apollo.

Rocket Executives #2 - 4: Petrel, Arianna, Archer
Lambda, Athena, and Apollo, respectively. See above for my opinion.

Pokéathlon Founder: Magnus
I will not make a Magnum, P.I. joke.
I will not make a Magnum, P.I. joke.
I will not make a Magnum, P.I. joke.
I will not...

[bobandbill]

Reading Serebii recently (gasp, shock, wut), Mind = blown. ;P

For me... well, I don't mind Ethan much. Apparently Hikibi (the Japanese name) meant Echo and Ethan means strong and enduring (or so I read)? That and someone came up with this: '"The name Ethan appears eight times in the Hebrew Bible." A name that appears several times repeatedly, as if to (dare I say) echo.' Vague-ish but seems to have some sort of relation to Hikibi nonetheless.

I quite like Archer... the others maybe a bit less than their Japanese counterparts, but oh well.

Also some Key Items got renamed....
Apricorn Box = Apricorn Case (ぼんぐりケース)
Berry Pots = Berry Planter (きのみプランター)
Dowsing MCHN = Itemfinder/Dowsing Machine (ダウジングマシン)
Enigma Stone = Enigma Crystal (なぞのすいしょう)
GB Sounds = GB Player (GBプレイヤー)
Jade Orb = Green Orb (もえぎいろのたま)
Pass = Train Pass (リニアパス)
Tidal Bell = Wave Bell (うみなりのスズ)
Unown Report = Unown Note (アンノーンノート)
Sport Ball = CompeBall (コンペボール)

Jade Orb instead of Green is...odd (consider the Red and Blue Orbs), and I personally preferred GB Player over GB Sounds. Sounds a bit...odd, is all. =P I also dislike the Dowsing MCHN - seriously, imposing artificial character limits now or something? I suppose they wanted to keep it in line with D/P/Pt but IMHO ItemFinder ala GSC is much better. =/ Oh well?

Oh and a few other things, like the Pokeathlon over Pokethlon, and Sinjho Ruins over Shinto (Sinnoh + Johto - nice for an event area that explains some relation between the two regions IMO).

[An-chan]

Lyra is pretty accurate, seeing as how Kotone means "the sound of koto", koto being a Japanese harp-like instrument... After all, Harp is hardly a pretty name, so Lyra is pretty obvious and logical. Still, I feel a bit let down. After referring to her as Kotone for such a long time, she is Kotone for me, and it'll be hard to call her by any other name. Still, I don't want to be one of those annoying people who think Japanese names are always better and English ones are unthinkable and unusable and whatnot, so Lyra it is.

As for Ethan... WUUUUT. It reminds me of those awful teenage high school comedydramawhatever series Disney Channel and other crappy channels air, somehow. It feels kinda far-fetched, but I guess it can't be helped. Why not Gold? What's wrong with Gold? When did they start bothering with actual names instead of the awesome old colours? *:c

On the rest of them I don't have much to comment, seeing as how I never played the original games.

[bobandbill]

As for Ethan... WUUUUT. It reminds me of those awful teenage high school comedydramawhatever series Disney Channel and other crappy channels air, somehow. It feels kinda far-fetched, but I guess it can't be helped. Why not Gold? What's wrong with Gold? When did they start bothering with actual names instead of the awesome old colours? With the last question, ever since R/S/E really, with Brendan/May. Same goes for the Japanese version (no longer Gold, but Hikibi). Oh well, I suppose - I'm playing as him anyways so I'll name him what I want. XD Lyra I'm fine with as well.

On the rest of them I don't have much to comment, seeing as how I never played the original games. Note that in the original games the Rocket executives had no names at all, and there was no Pokeathlon guy. Although the Dowsing MCHN was simply called the ItemFinder... -_-

[Jax]

Although the Dowsing MCHN was simply called the ItemFinder... -_-

Yeah, what the crap? =| I get the DPPt thing, but still, it was Itemfinder in the old games, and it was Itemfinder up until RSE anyway. Why did they feel the need to change it now?

Also, I agree with you about GB Sounds. That does not sound like an item at all. >_>

As for Jade Orb, even if it doesn't fit the entire Red and Blue theme, I thought it was a pretty name. And I do give the translators props for changing Unown Note to Unown Report. Unown Note just makes me want to make a Death Note crack. (Although part of me almost wants to think this was intentional on the Japanese team's end.)

[Prairie Chicken]

The only thing I'm sad about is the Itemfinder changing names, what with the nostalgia and everything, but it's a cool rename and it fits. The "MCHN" part more than makes up for it in my opinionn, since abbreviating words to fit some kind of character limit is such an early gen kind of thing. I never use the Itemfinder anyway. =P

As for the names, I might have paid more attention to "Ethan" if the game didn't immediately give you the option to rename the character anything you see fit. For me, Quinn is ready to train in Johto all over again, just like his similarly named brothers in Sinnoh, Kanto, and Hoenn.

[Dragonfree]

Eh. You people act like his name isn't Gold anymore. The reason they have non-game default names is that they can also appear as NPCs, which they want to give a proper name that's consistent across all the games in the generation, just as in the case of Brendan and May and Dawn and Lucas. "Gold" will still be one of the default names you get when you name him, just like "Diamond" and "Pearl" were in D/P and "Ruby" and "Sapphire" were in R/S.

Essentially there is no good reason for the fandom to stop calling him-as-a-player-character Gold just because he-as-an-NPC is named Ethan and Ethan will probably happen to be one of the several default names offered to the player when starting the game.


I also dislike the Dowsing MCHN - seriously, imposing artificial character limits now or something?
Um, artificial? There is a character limit, and it's always been around - there is only a certain number of bytes allocated for the name of each item. It was okay in D/P where the Dowsing Machine was a Pokétch app, not an item, but here it has to obey the twelve-character limit like everything else. Which is not to say they wouldn't have been better off leaving it as "Itemfinder", but if they wanted to keep the distinction between the crude beep-if-there's-an-item and the more precise radar sweep type, they had to shorten it, one way or another.

I liked the old Rocket executive names better, but I think it's probably just because I'm used to them, and it would have been sort of awkward to change Lance's name to another rocket but keep all the others. (Did anybody seriously think they were going to keep it as Lance? Seriously?)

[processr]

Re: Ethan? I can only think of Ethan Jarlewski from JPod (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPod). As for Lyra, I am reminded fondly of Northern Lights (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Lights_%28novel%29).

I don't like Dowsing MCHN, and CompeBall sounds really odd.

[Dragonfree]

I don't like Dowsing MCHN, and CompeBall sounds really odd.
Um, isn't CompeBall the Japanese name, with the English one being Sport Ball?

[Jax]

Eh. You people act like his name isn't Gold anymore. The reason they have non-game default names is that they can also appear as NPCs, which they want to give a proper name that's consistent across all the games in the generation, just as in the case of Brendan and May and Dawn and Lucas. "Gold" will still be one of the default names you get when you name him, just like "Diamond" and "Pearl" were in D/P and "Ruby" and "Sapphire" were in R/S.

Essentially there is no good reason for the fandom to stop calling him-as-a-player-character Gold just because he-as-an-NPC is named Ethan and Ethan will probably happen to be one of the several default names offered to the player when starting the game.

To make it easier to respond, let me just do a list:

1. Canonically, they've changed his name, and that's basically what his "main" name is. (Considering he also appears as an NPC, yeah, that also means his name is Ethan within the game as well.) While we all know that we can easily name him whatever we want (including keeping the name Gold in fanon... although this depends on what the fans do), he literally isn't Gold anymore within the games for reasons I can't entirely imagine because they otherwise didn't change anything about his character.

2. It's not really that big of a deal, sure. It just strikes me as curious because it seems out of the blue, considering he had a name in past games. On the other hand, considering how many things the developers have changed about the games to begin with and the fact that his default name isn't Gold in the Japanese versions, either, I'm more willing to accept it because, well, I saw this one coming. However, that goes into point #3 about the subject:

3. This still doesn't explain why they chose Ethan, which is the other half of my response to it. Given how fond of puns and themes Nintendo usually is (and how Hibiki and Kotone fit a theme), it's a little weird to me because, well, Ethan doesn't fit into the theme Lyra sets up as far as I can tell right now. Also not that big of a deal, but considering I agree with An-chan about how Ethan reminds me of bad Disney high school romances, I'll be inclined to look up punny musical names to blow off Nintendo's choice of things.

As for changing Lance's name but keeping all the others, on the other hand, unless I'm misinterpreting the translators' naming conventions, they tend to keep names that don't actually sound Japanese anyway. For example, in the GSC Elite Four, they kept Karen's name but changed Will and Bruno's. They also kept Erika's name in the Kanto set of gym leaders but changed everyone else's. So, maybe it wouldn't be so awkward compared to usual.

[processr]

Um, isn't CompeBall the Japanese name, with the English one being Sport Ball?

herp derp didn't read properly. >_>

[bobandbill]

And now we have Pokeathlon game names - apparently one or two might change slightly but for most we can take as confirmed most likely (serebii.net again!).

Hurdle Dash - Dash Hurdle (ダッシュハードル)
Lamp Jump -Bounce Field (バウンドフィールド)
Ring Drop - Ring Out Fight (リングアウトファイト)
Snow Throw - Shooting Snow (シューティングスノー)
Relay Run - Charge Relay (チェンジリレー)
Block Break - Break Block (ブレイクブロック)
Pennant Grab - Steal Flag (スティールフラッグ)
Disc Catch -Catch Saucer (キャッチソーサー)
Goal Roll - Smash Goal (スマッシュゴール)

[Scyther]

I don't mind any of it much at all. I mean seriously, they're just names, right. It's not like it'll change the plot of the game.

...Although, to be honest, naming the rockets after rockets was kinda the most awesome thing in the world. But it's not like we'll miss it.

[Eccentric Microbe]

As for Lyra, I am reminded fondly of Northern Lights (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Lights_%28novel%29).



THIS! <3 Which is why it makes me happy.