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Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2004 10:54 am
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Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2004 11:29 am
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Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2004 8:31 pm
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Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2004 7:20 pm
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Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 3:25 am
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I thought that May's Japanese name was "Haruka".
That is, unless you're refering to Gary's sister, and not the Pokémon R/S girl (it gets confusing sometimes).
And you forgot to mention that Gary's Japanese name is "Shigeru". And yes, he was named after the legendary madman...errr... video game genius, Shigeru Miyamoto. Satoshi Tajiri meant it as a joke because he kind of saw Miyamoto as his rival.
Also, I recall visiting a Japanese artist site a while back, and on one of the images, in plain English, it said "Team Rocket".
Now, I'm no expert on the Japanese language (heck, I hardly know anything about it), but I do know that Katakana is used to spell non-Japanese words (English, French, Spanish, etc.) and made-up words (like most Pokémon names). And often it isn't meant to be translated to Roman letters directly. But rather, take some liberties with it.
A couple of example are Mew and Mewtwo. I remember seeing a Japanese trading card (not the game cards, but regular trading cards) and it had the Pokémon names spelled in Roman letters. And it clearly said on the card "Mew". Another example I can remember is Arcanine's card: "Windie". And the Japanese movie poster for the first movie clearly stated "Mewtwo Strikes Back" in Roman letters. Playing Super Smash Bros. Melee in Japanese changes a few names: Koopa (Bowser), Ice Climber (Ice Climbers), Purin (Jigglypuff), but Mewtwo stays the same.
Plus, there's also the facts that some Katakana characters represent more than one sound. The "R" characters also represent "L" sounds. The "B" characters also represent "V" sounds. Etc. EXAMPLE1: Chikorita. チコリータ could've alternately been Romanized as "Chikolita", "Chicorita", etc. EXAMPLE2: Meowth. ニャース could be Romanized as "Nyarth" or "Nyasu".
A lot of the Japanese names (maybe even all of 'em, I'm not sure) have official Romanizations. An example is "Pikachu". While there are two "u"s in the Katakana, it is thrown out in the Romanization because it isn't necessary in Roman letters.
Also, "Pokémon" technically IS the Japanese version of "Pocket Monsters", since it is the Japanese contraction of the two words (and it gets used a lot, too. Look at recent box art, for example.)
I'd recommend checking Pokémon Forever's Pokédex for all Japanese names (French and German, too!).
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Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 12:36 pm
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Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 7:38 pm
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Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 8:29 pm
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