Capitalizing Pokemon names?

[Dragonfree]

That's just a plain non-sequitur. I was frustrated by the fact you felt the need to come in here and claim that they "should be capitalized like all other names" when that's simply not the case and you clearly aren't all that clear on how English capitalization actually works if you think that. I myself capitalize them (but recognize that that's grammatically nonsensical) and don't mind what other people do as long as they're consistent about it. If you come in here and make an uninformed claim about grammar, you can't just throw a fit if somebody tells you you're wrong and accuse them of being a grammar nazi. You were the one claiming there was one correct way to do it in the first place.

 

[MHugs]

The problem with this argument is that we don't really know for certain if that's true or if everything's just simplified because you're playing a kid/the main character is a kid. Likewise, we can't say for certain that "it's like that in the world of Pokémon, so therefore, it must be a rule" because we're only looking at things from a meta perspective. The reason why a lot of things are capitalized the way they are is because they're important concepts to us as players. And even then, it's not necessarily true in the Japanese version of the world because whether or not a word is capitalized is irrelevant. Given the fact that much of what we've seen of the Pokémon world, depending on which canon you use, may not even use our alphabet and grammatical structure (note that most signs and text in the anime nowadays are in stylized Japanese), we can't for certain say that the characters of that world would actually capitalize those words based on a specific rule that makes sense to them. It's all basically meta.

Nearly as I can tell, the meta perspective you're talking about is fandom. Resultantly, capitalization of Pokémon names is leant the same weight that all official source material is in fandom.

When sources like Nintendo Player's Guides capitalize the names, I have a hard time admitting any logic-based arguments into evidence (not that I think logic shows the non-capatilization route is correct).

Your point about Japanese having no capital letters/otherwise is a good one. Then there's French, where (for example) nationalities and religions are not capitalized. Given that languages have such differences, why shouldn't the "Pokémon world language" feature capitlization of such names?

 

[FireTypeLover]

Like many people here stated, I capitalize Pokémon names despite it being grammatically incorrect because it's a common noun and all. I just do it out of habit and since every single official source capitalizes them, I feel compelled to listen to them. Not saying not capitalizing them is wrong, just stating my reason why I capitalize it. And why everyone else does too, but that's besides the point...

Anyways, speaking of Farla, she coincidently reviewed my fic on FF.net recently stating that I shouldn't capitalize Pokémon names. I (hopefully) politely reviewed one of her fics to tell her why I capitalize it and all. Oh, and also for a response to the other stuff Farla said. Other than that part, Farla's review was a good one and it helped me think up an idea to poorly hand wave (or maybe not hand wave, I think it's hand waving) a part of the story that didn't make sense in retrospect.

And, finally, iCakeify, it seems like you skipped reading the entire thread to post your response. And after Dragonfree told you what was wrong with that, you called Dragonfree an offensive grammar nazi (and speaking of grammar nazis, in that situation, you use choose, not chose) Really, don't do that, especially when you don't know what you're talking about. (You know, this is basically what JX Valentine and Dragonfree said, but more straightfoward. Oh, and also I'm overusing parantheses. Yay, I guess?)

 

[MHugs]

Like many people here stated, I capitalize Pokémon names despite it being grammatically incorrect

Whoa, whoa, whoa. It's not gramatically incorrect; rather, their grammatical correctness is a moot point because they aren't real English words to begin with. Therefore, they don't have a classification of proper noun or anything of the sort, and it is grammatically correct to write them any way you please.

There is no argument to be made on either side on basis of grammar.

 

[Psychic]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. It's not gramatically incorrect; rather, their grammatical correctness is a moot point because they aren't real English words to begin with. Therefore, they don't have a classification of proper noun or anything of the sort, and it is grammatically correct to write them any way you please.

There is no argument to be made on either side on basis of grammar.

Er, have you been reading the thread? The entire point of the no capitalization argument is that it follows a grammatical rule of only capitalizing proper nouns. This is a grammatical convention within the English language, thus if you introduce a new word to the English language, it would still need to follow basic English grammatical rules because we're using English. If you were making up a new language, then you can ignore the grammatical conventions of English/French/Spanish/German/whatever and do what you please. But here, the argument is that if you're writing in English, then you have to follow the English grammar rules, and that includes this idea that Pokemon names are only capitalized when they are proper nouns. I don't even follow this, but I'll still readily admit that it makes sense and holds more ground from a grammatical standpoint.

Also, puppies cry when you misspell "grammatically."

~Psychic

 

[Legend of Lucario]

Personally, I kind of do what Breezy does and lowercase everything now.

I used to capitalize pokemon, pokemon species names, items, etc. but now I do not. I kind of think of it in the way that you wouldn't capitalize dog, cat, or owl so I do not capitalize pikachu, rhyhorn, or igglybuff. (I hope you see where I'm heading.)

I honestly do not think that it matters though, as, like others have said, you are consistant, to me, it is not distracting whether it is samurott or Samurott, pokedex or Pokedex, or whatever else you can think of, that's just how I feel.

However, if a trainer refers to their pokemon by their species name, I capitalize that.

EX

Silver's feraligatr bit down on the echidna pokemon's head, glancing back at his trainer for further commands.

"Feraligatr, let go and use Hydro Pump," Silver shouted.

Also, when referring to Pokemon as the franchise, and not fiction style, I do tend to capitalize that and species names, because then I'm not talking about them from a "they exist in the real world" sense, I'm discussing them in the "this is a created franchise" sense.

I hope you understood all that!

 

[MHugs]

Er, have you been reading the thread? The entire point of the no capitalization argument is that it follows a grammatical rule of only capitalizing proper nouns. This is a grammatical convention within the English language, thus if you introduce a new word to the English language, it would still need to follow basic English grammatical rules because we're using English. If you were making up a new language, then you can ignore the grammatical conventions of English/French/Spanish/German/whatever and do what you please. But here, the argument is that if you're writing in English, then you have to follow the English grammar rules, and that includes this idea that Pokemon names are only capitalized when they are proper nouns. I don't even follow this, but I'll still readily admit that it makes sense and holds more ground from a grammatical standpoint.

This is merely my opinion. I don't think there's anything factual in this thread that makes what I said untrue...in my opinion, there is no grammatical argument.

As I see it, the names of Pokémon should not be subject to English grammatical conventions because they are not real words. A dictionary has no np., n., vb., or other classification for "Pikachu;" therefore, they do not fall under the capitalization rules of a proper or common noun.

If you insist that Pokémon names must be proper nouns or common nouns, as if they're real words, there's a simple solution: they're always proper nouns. Problem solved.

In the Pokémon world (here we are imagining the concept of proper/common applies in that world), there is no evidence one way or the other that Pokémon names are proper except that they are capitalized. Therefore we may conclude, if we feel like it, that they are proper nouns, and we can carry that over to English and capitalize them with righteous fury.

Also, puppies cry when you misspell "grammatically."

I only misspelled it once out of two. Typo.

Frankly, all of what I've said brings me back to my earlier point: Using grammar rules of real language to talk about made-up words from a different reality seems very silly.

 

[JX Valentine]

Nearly as I can tell, the meta perspective you're talking about is fandom.

Actually, I'm saying that all text we get is from a meta perspective. As in, just because we see it in English doesn't necessarily mean that the characters are speaking or writing in English. You could interpret it to be such, but as far as we're concerned, the Pokémon world is not our world. That means that the only reason why we see writing in English is because it's what we, as readers and players, can understand. That same writing is in Japanese for someone in Japan because it's what the Japanese player comprehends. In short, we can't apply the language rules to their world and call it fact because the language that we're seeing and hearing in all canon material, for the most part, is only rendered the way it is because it's what we can understand. For all we know, the characters in the Pokémon universe actually speak and write in a completely alien language that doesn't go by our rules, but it's translated for us because we'd never understand it ourselves.

(As a note, a lot of media does this. Comics like Scandinavia and the World even lampshade it, and most sci-fi fiction with aliens in it just assume that you already know that. Or introduce a translator. Or have the language conveniently be so similar to English/insert native language here that it's treated as the same.)

That said, the reason why Pokémon and items are capitalized in canon is because to us, they're important items. We don't know if the characters in that universe use a language that acknowledges capitalization to begin with, so it's a moot point. Like I said in the earlier post and like I implied above, in certain continuities, the language that the characters use is revealed to be basically stylized Japanese. (It's interesting to note that it's so stylized that it actually looks like an alien language, as if implying that this language isn't something that has a real-world equivalent. On the other hand, there's also signs in other languages throughout the same canon, but these are usually all capitalized and used to emphasize particular words. They also existed before the anime introduced this "new" alphabet.) So, to them, it could be that capitalization doesn't exist in that particular language's grammar set.

Your point about Japanese having no capital letters/otherwise is a good one. Then there's French, where (for example) nationalities and religions are not capitalized. Given that languages have such differences, why shouldn't the "Pokémon world language" feature capitlization of such names?

Because we don't know the rules for any other of the Pokémon world's languages (much less the one we're given). We don't even really know what language the characters we encounter actually use to write. As far as we can tell (in the anime, at least), the predominant written language in all of the regions we've seen so far is the stylized Japanese language we've been seeing in writing for the past few seasons. We don't know if this is a global writing system (a la Braille) or if this is actually exclusive to characters like Dawn and May (two examples who are known to be able to read it). So, we don't know for certain if Lt. Surge would actually capitalize Pokémon names because they're capitalized in-game, if he wouldn't because it'd be like capitalizing "mouse" or "dog," or if it's actually completely a moot point.

I guess the point is that you can at most have the personal interpretation that characters write with (insert your particular language here) and that they follow all the related capitalization conventions, but you can't say that it's fact that they do because everything we see is meant to be written in a way we can understand, not the way the characters can understand. In other words, we see English and English grammar conventions because we speak English. They might see something completely different because they could, for all we know, be speaking a starfish alien language. Likewise, capitalization is used to highlight words that should be important to us, but we don't know either way if the characters would capitalize those same words themselves.

Or if it helps, an example. Let's say someone in another dimension is writing a fanfic based on a story that is our world, but according to their species, words like "Cat" and "Mouse" are always capitalized because they don't have cats or mice in their universe (and therefore, cats and mice are creatures they should pay attention to). Would this mean that we always capitalize "cat" and "mouse"? Same basic argument.

Or in even shorter, your latest post sums it up quite nicely:

Using grammar rules of real language to talk about made-up words from a different reality seems very silly.

Of course, if you want to have a personal interpretation that says language rules work a certain way, then more power to you. It's just that you can't really state it as canon fact that characters within the universe consciously follow your rules unless it's actually explicitly stated (in this case, unless there's a language lesson about it). I'm just saying that there's absolutely no definite answer either way, which means that both parties are equally valid (or invalid, depending on how you look at it) if we're going to use the "but that's what they do in that world" argument.

Edit: Also, just because it's capitalized doesn't mean it's a proper noun. ._. A proper noun is the name of a particular person, place, thing, or idea. If you're referring to all Pikachu in a species as a whole, you're not using the word "Pikachu" as a proper noun; it's a common noun for the same basic logic as saying the word "mouse" in reference to multiple mice would be a common noun. A proper noun would be something like if you were referring to Ash's Pikachu as Pikachu. That's a proper noun because that's the name of a specific member of that species, not all of them or just a random one/group of them.

I mean, I don't really want to argue at you because you and I actually have pretty similar viewpoints on the whole thing (that we can't apply language rules to an alien world and call it canon), but as a massive pedant myself, I just can't help but say (not to you so much as to pretty much everyone else who's brought up proper nouns and tried to insist that all Pokémon species names are) that it's a good idea to be careful about the definition of a proper noun before one proposes that species names are. The concept of the term doesn't depend on the language you're using. A proper noun is still a term that only refers to a particular person, place, thing, or idea.

 

[~Sam~]

well they are living breathing creatures so you you should capitalize their names like animals

 

[MHugs]

JX - I can't much argue with that. However, I can point a convention in video games. Take the Kirby series, for example. There is no in-game language, really, but that's not the point. You have capitalization of Kirby, Meta Knight, and King Dedede, but you also have it with a Waddle Doo, or the Waddle Dee. And 'waddle' is even a real word!

It's a matter of assigning these things (which exist in multitude and are a lot like cats and dogs) "characters" which are then referred to with capital names, even in the common sense. That's just how the convention goes.

Also, Pokémon names are capitalized in French, along with words like Poké Ball and move names, even though France has less capitalization in general than English. Just a random observation that sounds like it helps me.

 

[Dragonfree]

As I see it, the names of Pokémon should not be subject to English grammatical conventions because they are not real words. A dictionary has no np., n., vb., or other classification for "Pikachu;" therefore, they do not fall under the capitalization rules of a proper or common noun.

If you insist that Pokémon names must be proper nouns or common nouns, as if they're real words, there's a simple solution: they're always proper nouns. Problem solved.

In the Pokémon world (here we are imagining the concept of proper/common applies in that world), there is no evidence one way or the other that Pokémon names are proper except that they are capitalized. Therefore we may conclude, if we feel like it, that they are proper nouns, and we can carry that over to English and capitalize them with righteous fury.

You can't just decide a made-up word is a proper noun when the way you use it doesn't actually behave like a proper noun or have the grammatical characteristics of a proper noun - just like you can't arbitrarily say that it's a verb just because it isn't in a dictionary. "Pikachu" just isn't a verb; if it were a verb, it would have a subject and possibly an object, and you could replace other verbs with it and the sentence would still make grammatical sense, and you could put it in the past tense, and so on. Similarly, no matter what you arbitrarily decide to call it, it just isn't a proper noun. You can talk about "a Pikachu" and "the Pikachu" and "that Pikachu over there", whereas talking about "a Bob" and "the Bob" and "that Bob over there" sounds funny.

Then there's French, where (for example) nationalities and religions are not capitalized. Given that languages have such differences, why shouldn't the "Pokémon world language" feature capitlization of such names?

That's irrelevant, because you're writing in English, not in the Pokémon world language. If you were writing about France in English, you would still capitalize nationalities and religions, because you're writing in English. Conversely, if I as an Icelander were to write about England in Icelandic (which does not capitalize the names of languages), I wouldn't capitalize "enska" just because "English" is capitalized in English.

Also, Pokémon names are capitalized in French, along with words like Poké Ball and move names, even though France has less capitalization in general than English. Just a random observation that sounds like it helps me.

As I explained in my first post in the thread, things in video games are often capitalized simply because it is easier from a programming standpoint: the game will have to insert the name of the object into various phrases, where it can probably appear both at the beginning and elsewhere a sentence, and code would have to be added to capitalize the word when appropriate if it weren't simply always capitalized. There's also the trademark bit, and what JX Valentine pointed out about how these are words that the player should notice.

 

[MHugs]

What you're saying actually holds up my "mitigation" argument of just saying Pokémon names are always proper nouns. Since in the "translation" to English in-game they are always capitalized, one could take that as a sign that (regardless of their Poké-world-speak capitalization or lack thereof) they are proper nouns.

I don't believe this is the case (they're capitalized because they're characters in a liscensing sense), but if a language justification has to be given, that works fine.

EDIT: ...With below post reminding me again why it's weird to argue about capitalization on basis of language at all.

 

[Missingno. Master]

Me, personally? Pokemon names are always capitalized in canon without question, and so that's how I do it in my work. I don't see any reason it has to be more complicated than that.

 

[GalladeRocks]

I personally believe that Pokemon names, rather in reference to an individual or the species as a whole, should be capitalized, as in all canon mediums. However, I don't have an issue with people who don't capitalize them, so long as they stay consistent.

 

[Act]

There are a few underlying problems here. The first one is that people, in general (hi there, MHugs), don't know enough about linguistics and English grammar, never mind how new words are introduced into language. As someone who has been through English Ed. training programs, I blame the theories currently governing the American English education system. They are disgusting and horrible and I hate them.

The second, which is almost as important but not as depressing, is that people don't like to be wrong. When they've been doing something, and they see other people doing it, too, and then they're told point-blank it's wrong, their gut reaction is to go to extreme lengths to defend their position. People aren't reasonable.

The third is that there is no consistency on this issue in our fandom, so there's two separate things being discussed here:

1) what is grammatically correct if we follow the rules of our language (not capitalizing)
2) what is correct in our fandom (neither, with a tendency toward capitalization)

Point four: The OP isn't actually interested in either of these issues, they're just butthurt. No one is actually interested, which is why Farla, Dragonfree, Jax, and I (and people like us) don't bother writing up long linguistic diagnoses explaining point-for-point why the logic on our side is, in fact, logic. No one would read it (seriously, count the numbers of times people have said "It's how they do it in the games/manual/on Nintendo's web site!" in this thread alone, and even after Dragonfree pointed out that's simply a grammatical convention stemming from how to punctuate a copyrighted word!). If you actually thought it mattered, you'd actually attempt to learn about what you're arguing.

Fifthithlyish, new authors are very emotionally connected to their works and tend not to be particular rational or self-critical. This is also why there's an extreme lack of critical thinking going on here: just because these are copyrighted nouns and treated as such here in meta-fiction, in the story itself the words are not copyrighted and thus follow the rules of normal nouns. This inability to distinguish between what's true IRL and what's true in the fiction world happens all the time and is, I think, just an extension of amateur writers being too connected to their works.

Sixth, and seriously, come on: This has all been addressed already by Farla hereself, (not to mention Dragonfree, Silawen, Jax, etc. and I) ad nauseum in Farla's very own forums. RTFM, guys. R. T. F. M.

Finally, your first concrit sucks the big one. Back when I was like 12 (oh god I've been doing this for too long) I flamed Keleri (I think) for my first concrit. But if you actually care about writing (or anything), you'll learn to glean as much from it as you possibly can because criticism is the only way we improve. It's a maturing process, learning to deal with that, but it's a vital one in all walks of life. Good luck.

 

[MHugs]

hi there, MHugs

Hi.

I agree with most of what you said. However, I fail to see what my grasp of the English language has to do with my argument. Whether I understand the way words are introduced to English doesn't matter, because Pokémon names have not and never will be introduced to "English." They aren't words.

As a result of their non-word status, all grammar-based arguments mean nothing.

Leaving us with the more reasonable question: How do the people who invented these names want us to use them? If there's no Word of God on the subject, how about this: How do they use them themselves?

The answer to at least the second question is with capitalization. I don't care how in-depth Farla has addressed the grammar arguments, or how many Nobel laureate English theses you've written demonstrating that Pokémon names shouldn't be capitalized, because, simply put, Pokémon names are capitalized.

EDIT: On the subject of defensiveness... As you can probably tell, I am a very high-strung individual and I apologize in advance for any snsrkiness I have slung or will sling your way.

 

[Act]

I agree with most of what you said. However, I fail to see what my grasp of the English language has to do with my argument. Whether I understand the way words are introduced to English doesn't matter, because Pokémon names have not and never will be introduced to "English." They aren't words.

As a result of their non-word status, all grammar-based arguments mean nothing.

I've got to hand it to you, this is a position in this argument I've never heard before.

A word is any linguistic unit (including its spoken and written forms) consisting of one or more morphemes that functions as a carrier of meaning.

If your point here is that "pikachu" is not a word-- it has no meaning, no morphemes, no phonemes, and does not represent anything-- the burden of proof is on you, and it is quite large. I welcome you to present a convincing argument that these are not words, and I am greatly looking forward to it.

 

[MHugs]

Take something like pixiv. By all accounts a proper noun, but either for stylistic reasons or because of the lack of concept of capital letters in Japanese*, it is 'officially' uncapitalized.

*If you plan to use the language of origin as an argument against me, most English in Japanese is all caps, not all lowercase.

But isn't pixiv a word? And grammatically, website titles are capitalized; at least by convention, right? Google, Yahoo, Serebii?

If the definition of 'word,' makes my argument inadmissable (and it's funny you can't see past that to the heart what I'm saying), then forget about it. The word Pikachu is not part of the English language. Its usage within the English language, therefore, is subject foremost to its creator's intentions.

Take a step back, and ignore the origins of the word Pikachu. Now it is simply a word, with no arguments one way or the other, except, oh, say, its creator's usage of it. Since it has no animal-analogous basis in the language, suddenly there's no reason not to capitalize it, is there? It's not a proper noun or a common noun, after all. Who's to say it's even a noun? I Pikachu you. Hey look, it's a verb. Well, what the hell; let's just use it the way the company that liscensed and promotes the word does.

By applying grammar rules, you're acting as if the word must (and does) have the full set of qualities a real, part-of-the-actual-language word does. If it does, then the only reasonable source for figuring those out is the source of the made-up word itself!

For crying out loud, the plural forms of Pokémon names don't take an s. How much more stupid could it be to try and fit a made-up word originally configured to deal with programming constraints into English?

A real word has everything you mentioned. It has tenses, plurals, articles, capitalization, and pronunciation. If words from Pokémon can be said to have any of those, it's very clear where they come from.

Pronunciation; another good example. Arceus? Hmm, how do I pronounce that c? If only there was some kind of authority on this word that gives it all its attributes...

EDIT: I appreciate the edit. My bad for firing up so quickly.

 

[Dragonfree]

Pokémon names are words being introduced into English. Hell, they're names made up specifically for the English version of the games, usually using English words as a base - but just the fact that they're used in English-language games that insert them into English sentences means they're being introduced into English, and even if that weren't the case, writing them into an English-language fanfic would also be introducing them into English. And when that is done with foreign words, they should generally be made to follow English rules.

Take Japanese names, for instance. Satoshi Tajiri's name isn't Satoshi Tajiri; it's actually written with Kanji and Hiragana and the surname comes first. However, when his name is used in English text, it is written as Satoshi Tajiri, employing English rules for the order of a person's given name and surname, written in the English (Latin) alphabet, using capital letters at the beginning of each name (something done in English that has absolutely no equivalent in Japanese).

EDIT: I need to go to bed so I don't have time to respond to everything in that post you made while I was writing this one, but you can't strip away the meaning from "Pikachu", deduce that then it might as well be a proper noun, and say that this means Pikachu the actual meaningful word that means a species of fictional creature therefore might as well also be a proper noun. The fact it has that meaning and usage is what makes it a common noun and not a proper noun or a verb. In fact, if you do strip away all the meaning, connotations and rules about usage, that's when you get something that isn't a word at all. As it is, "Pikachu" does have a meaning and connotations and usage, which tells us logically it wouldn't be capitalized except for the trademark/variable thing. If you actually asked Satoshi Tajiri whether, in his vision of the Pokémon world, Pokémon names would all be capitalized if the people spoke English, he'd probably say either "No" or "Huh?"; he would not tell you that yes, people in the Pokémon world do capitalize the names of Pokémon species and that this is mandated by Word of God.

And there are plenty of normal words that are the same in singular and plural, especially loanwords, so Pokémon names behaving that way isn't against grammatical conventions.

 

[MHugs]

Dragonfree, my meandering argument boils down to this:

If the words must be introduced to the language, and if they must have all the trappings of a real word, then they come pre-loaded with them. It's a packaged deal. The spelling, definition, pronunciation, capitalization, etc. are all created by the localization team.

Using anything else is incorrect, but not grammatically so because the localizers' intent trumps the 'logical' integration into English. Or something. I quit.