Japanese Pokemon Names

If you know that “Pokemon” has three syllables, you're already clued into the unique sound of the Japanese language. Japanese has an “open-syllable sound pattern.” This means that every syllable ends in a vowel. (An exception is that some syllables end with the consonant “N,” as in the third syllable of Pokemon.)

A syllable in Japanese may be simply a vowel sound, or it may be a consonant sound combined with a vowel sound. But two consonant sounds are never pushed together the way they are in English, as in the word drink. When a word is borrowed from English, it must be changed to fit the open-syllable sound pattern of Japanese. In this way, the English word “drink” becomes “dorinku” (doh-rin-ku) in Japanese.

Sometimes sounds change, too. For example, Japanese does not really have an “L” sound. In Japanese, a borrowed word with an “L” sound will have a sort of “R” sound instead.

These changes sometimes make it hard to recognize borrowed words. You can find examples in the Japanese Pokemon names. For instance, the Japanese name for Drowzee, “Suripu,” is actually the English word for “sleep.” The “L” sound has become an “R” sound. And, to make every syllable end with a vowel, there have been vowel sounds added after the “S” and the “P.”

Likewise, the Japanese name for Haunter, “Gosuto”, is really the English word for “Ghost.” The Japanese name for Chansey, “Raki,” is actually the English word for “Lucky.” Skim through this list to find other examples!