Game News Pokémon Scarlet Violet: A few months before the release, some pokemon are changing their names!
We are four months away from the arrival of the new generation, and Pokémon Scarlet Violet is far from having unveiled all its mysteries. However, something quite rare, some creatures in the Pokédex will change their names. Let’s see it all together.
The rental puzzle: pokemon change their names!
You probably know this, but in most countries where Pokémon games and products are released, localization teams take care of adapting the names. In France, it was Julien Bardakoff and his team who had the heavy task of giving the French names to the ever-increasing number of Gamefreak creatures. Constant exchanges with Japanese rights holderstricks and puns were the daily life of these people thanks to whom we know Dracaufeu (which is still not a dragon type), Feunard, Noctali or Scarhino.
In the rest of the world, Pokémon have also been adapted, and, more than rare, it happens they change their name! This is indeed what just happened. in Thailand, where the franchise is very successful as in many other places around the world. Indeed, on the official Thai website of the license, a very short press release appeared about ten days ago. The Thai market not being the most observed by the West, the info, unusual, took a few days to reach us. Here is what the Pokémon Company tells players:
Thank you all for your interest and keep having fun with Pokémon. We would like to announce that in the Thai version of Pokemon, the Pokemon names will be changed as follows.
Rotono → Nyorotono, Mahocsi → Mafoxi, Shusukera → Tsutsukera
(…)
A rapprochement with Japanese names, for what reasons?
If you recognized the pokemon in question, congratulations! For the others, they are Tarpaud, Goupelin and Picassault, whose representations are available above. The new name of Tarpaud is not so original, because it is from the Japanese name of one of the two evolutions of Têtarte. Goupelin’s new identity is also closer Japanese (Mafokushi or Mahoxy), while Picassault also adopts in Thai the Japanese name. It’s unclear why the names were changed to be closer to Japanese, but several hypotheses are on the table.
The first one relates to marketing, which should start again with the release of Pokémon Scarlet / Purple. A simplification bringing the Southeast Asian market closer to Japan, for greater efficiency. This change may also be due to difficulties related to thedifferent dialects, but it would be amazing if that only happened now. Finally, it is possible that these names, as they have been translated, pose a problem in the language or that protected trademarks have filed an appeal.
