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Comment on Why so many Steam games have weirdly similar (and forgettable) names

Pokemon also started out as Pocket Monsters in the original Japanese release. When it came to release outside Japan, there was trademark issues and they had to find an alternative name… ended up with Pokemon. Later they rebranded the game in Japan too. Someone correct me if I’m wrong here.

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LwL@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Japanese loves abbreviating english loan words to two syllables (see also: remote control -> remokon, personal computer -> pasokon), so I’d suspect it was called pokemon colloquially very early and then the international branding caused it to become official.

Wikipedia seems to agree but i didn’t check sources

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- thingsiplay@lemmy.ml ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I think the history of the name is similar to PUBG. The original games name was Pocket Monsters, but the community just abbreviated it to “Pokemon”, because Pocket Monsters isn’t a word they can pronounce correctly. But it wasn’t the part of the name at all. You can check the game title, cartridge image and packaging. In a later international release because of the trademark issues they just used the shorter name instead.
  
  I think to this day the games are named “Pocket Monsters” in Japan, but with “Pokemon” added in front. But I’m actually not sure about this. One source to look for are game box-art covers: pokemondungeon.com/media-downloads/box-art and on archives.bulbagarden.net/…/Category:Game_covers
  
  Pokemon Blue (Game Boy, Japanese)
  
  Pokemon Ruby (Game Boy Advance, Japanese)
  
  Pokemon Sun (Nintendo 3DS, Japanese)
  
  But in newer games (I don’t know since when) they seem to have dropped the “Pocket Monsters” part from the actual game name entirely:
  
  Pokemon Legends Arceus (Switch, Japanese)
  
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