Name Debate

paperfairy

paperfairy

Pokémon Capture Expert
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BTW, is he officially Barry now? Can I stop calling him Jun?


So, could we get a comprhensive list of player names? I'm proposing:

Red (Mt. Silver)

Green (Viridian)(PKMN Blue has more or less beem retconned)

Leaf? (That's her officical name in FRLG, but it seems to conflict Green. Will she even exist in HGSS? Will she replace Red? (plausible!))

**EDIT: It is confirmed that RED breaks up Team Rocket. At least he still exists.

Heart? (based on Leaf becoming canon) (previously Gold)

Soul? (Giovanni's "son", previously Silver)

Female Johto girl (not Kris, she is Crystal only, so whatever default name that the game gives her. Suggestions? Kris perhaps to make us giggle, but does not fit H/S )

Brendan, May, Wally, Lucas, Dawn, and I BELIEVE WE HAVE AGREED THAT HE IS BARRY/JUN, yes?

Discuss. Debate.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and Janine/Charine? And anybody else that got nerfed?
 
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um, does this belong here?

I thought it was still Gold, Silver, and Soul/Heart/Whatever we are calling her.
 
Why would Gold and Silver be renamed when Red and Green were not? Despite being shown in an official artwork, there was no female character in any of the Generation I games, which is to say that Leaf was introduced in the remakes and consequently had her name derived from one of the prefixes.

We will call the female character by whatever name the games will give her as an NPC. Both player characters are also most likely going to have pre-set names now that the opposite-gender character has a role in the story. This is more difficult than it may seem at first, for the following reasons:

  • The names "Gold" and "Silver" will be the default names for the player character and the rival, depending on the version. In light of the risk of having colliding identities (which is likely for players who don't come up with their own names), the opposite-gender character can't be given either one of those names.

  • If to follow FireRed and LeafGreen's precedent, "Heart" will be available as a default name for HeartGold players, while "Soul" will be appear as a possible name for SoulSilver players. If the opposite-gender character were to follow that naming convention, then the name would depend on the version (being the prefix of the opposite version's name), rather than on the character's gender. This would cause a very apparent problem when playing as the female character in SoulSilver, since "Heart" is far too feminine a name for a boy to have (at least without having the ability to change it).

You may may suggest that "Heart" and "Soul" not be available as default names for the player characters, making it possible for the non-playable male character be called Soul, while his female counterpart will be known as Heart. However, we can deduce from screenshots that they will be available from the default list for the player characters. Besides, the male character bears a striking resemblance to Gold - to the point where the aforementioned convention would create confusion as to how Gold's reincarnation could be associated with the remade Silver version.

It follows from the above considerations that another set of names should be used. The difficulty in finding such names is that if they didn't have any connection to any of the versions, they would look out of place with Red and Green being present in the games (and quite possibly Leaf, as well). To that end, I propose using "Chris" for the male character and "Kris" for the female one - the default names from Crystal. Unlike other versions, Crystal's primary defualt names reflected the characters' genders and also took real-life naming conventions into account. They would therefore be appropriate even in a pair of games that didn't have "Crystal" in their titles.

If Game Freak implemented my idea, fans would still be inclined to refer to the male character as "Gold" owing to the extreme similarity to the original character, and also in view of the fact that "Chris" was just Crystal's replacement of "Gold". With the female character, however, "Kris" would be an obvious reference to Crystal's female protagonist, and would be more viable a name than either "Heart" or "Soul" (which would just be two of several version-dependent names - without there being any indication of which one is the most fitting). There would be no distinction between the female characters, much like in Red's case where his name compensated for the extreme makeover.

and I BELIEVE WE HAVE AGREED THAT HE IS BARRY/JUN, yes?
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Sadly, so many fans have got used to calling him Pearl that they disregard the fact that Platinum generates both "Diamond" and "Pearl" when no name is manually inserted. The lack of preference as to the version-based name strongly suggests that he has another name like Lucas and Dawn, which would have to be Barry/Jun (the only default name shared between two versions - Diamond and Pearl).

The Bulbapedia debate should be revived.
 
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I like Chris, Silver and Kris. So, you proposed, if I read correctly:

Red
Green
Leaf
Chris
Silver
Kris
[...]
Barry

?
 
"Chris" and "Kris" are practically the same name attuned to different genders, so they can't be applied at the same time. Regardless of what the male character's pre-set name is, we should still refer to him as Gold to parallel his rival. In fact, having "Chris" as the pre-set name would be a good indication that he is the original character, since Gold, Silver and Crystal obviously shared their male player character.
 
Ah I see what you are saying. Gold, Silver and Kris. Sorry about that. About the Bulbapedia debate - I recall it but your argument seems to destroy it...
 
I'm guessing they'll just use the names Chris and Kris from Crystal.

And before I get anyone jumping down my throat about these not being Crystal remakes and Kris is exclusive to Crystal, think about it this way: Kris is no more exclusive to Crystal than May is to Emerald. If Ruby and Sapphire have the same female trainer, with the same name as Emerald's female trainer, then it stands to reason that remakes of Gold and Silver are using the same female trainer as Crystal (with an overhauled design).
 
Jeff said:
If Ruby and Sapphire have the same female trainer, with the same name as Emerald's female trainer, then it stands to reason that remakes of Gold and Silver are using the same female trainer as Crystal (with an overhauled design).
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If only everyone could see it that way. Most fans just care about what she looks like.
 
What I think can be done is to give the unchosen character a fixed name different from the ones preset, similar to what they did wih RSE: I remember that "May" wasn't available in any of the three versions, but instead you had Terra for Ruby and Marina for Sapphire. For the male, you had "Landon" in Ruby and "Sean" in Sapphire, but never Brendan. So they could do the same here: Have both Gold and Silver (scrapping Heart and Soul) for your player character and give the unchosen one a common name like Chris (for the male if you choose the girl) and Kris (for the girl if you chose the boy), as suggested by UL, but with these new names not included in the preset list. This way Gold and Silver could keep their old canon names and leave the new name for the girl as a NPC as her canon name (whether it is or not Kris).

Another option is to restrict "Gold" and "Silver" names for the male and "Heart" and "Soul" for the female only. UL complained Heart was too feminine, so this would solve the problem altogether (in Spanish, not only Heart is feminine, but also Soul, since Alma, the Spanish word for soul, is a given name for women. This of course doesn't matter to Nintendo nor Game Freak, just a cultural data), and thus, facilitate and consolidate the way of canon-naming females in remakes after one of the suffixes.

I think these ideas to be easier than the ones suggested by UL, but who knows? Neither him nor me work for GF so we won't know what they'll do until we have the game in our handhelds and see by ourselves how they dealt with it.
 
Veggietable said:
Another option is to restrict "Gold" and "Silver" names for the male and "Heart" and "Soul" for the female only. UL complained Heart was too feminine, so this would solve the problem altogether (in Spanish, not only Heart is feminine, but also Soul, since Alma, the Spanish word for soul, is a given name for women. This of course doesn't matter to Nintendo nor Game Freak, just a cultural data), and thus, facilitate and consolidate the way of canon-naming females in remakes after one of the suffixes.
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We've seen the name "Soul" applied to the male player character (not to be confused with the NPC) in screenshots. Considering that inserted names have never been used in official screenshots, that should indicate that it is included in the default list.

As for the rest of argument, I don't see why brand new names would be chosen over perfectly normal names that are associated with a previous version (it wouldn't be apparent to new players who weren't around in Generation II). With Red and Green being in the games, the convention of version-based names for NPCs has already been put in place.
 
You know guys... there's already been a screenshot of Elm calling Gold "Soul," so don't think this is something you can guess at willy-nilly.
 
Unown Lord said:
If only everyone could see it that way. Most fans just care about what she looks like.
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I see it like you.. unflortunately, as you said, we're a minority...


ANinyMouse said:
You know guys... there's already been a screenshot of Elm calling Gold "Soul," so don't think this is something you can guess at willy-nilly.
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Yep, but that doesn't mean that's the canon name. In my FR booklet there are screenshots of the male player being called Fire, but we know his name is not Fire, but Red, so this can apply here too.
 
I don't think their canon names will be included in the list unless their canon names are still "Gold,Silver,Chris/Kris,Heart,and Soul". After all, "Lucas" and "Dawn" were available from the namelist in DPPt If GameFreak decides to give the GSC crew common names, I think they should use Kenta and Marina. I can see Chris and Kris being used in the English versions,but they could be a problem for the Japanese versions since you don't run into many people with names as such over there. Basically, I think "Chris" and "Kris" should be part of the namelist,but not be Gold/Kris/Soul's canon names.(I see Kris and Soul as the same person,but whatever.)

Frankly, I think "Gold" and "Silver" will be retconned since it would be pretty odd when you bump into your opposite gender counterpart and find out their name is a name of a metal oppossed to something normal like Brendan and May.
 
ANinyMouse said:
You know guys... there's already been a screenshot of Elm calling Gold "Soul," so don't think this is something you can guess at willy-nilly.
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There are also official screenshots calling Lucas "Diamond", "Pearl" and "Plato". Every version's manual uses screenshots with the name corresponding to that version. It truly means nothing.

Raine said:
I can see Chris and Kris being used in the English versions,but they could be a problem for the Japanese versions since you don't run into many people with names as such over there.
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Are "Red" and "Green" really better in terms of usage? They're odd to western players, as well.
 
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Unown Lord said:
Are "Red" and "Green" really better in terms of usage? They're odd to western players, as well.
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Good point.

They have been using common names lately,but did the official site refer him as Red on the popup about Rocket being disbanned? Or is he being refered as some "mysterious person"?
 
Unown Lord said:
We've seen the name "Soul" applied to the male player character (not to be confused with the NPC) in screenshots. Considering that inserted names have never been used in official screenshots, that should indicate that it is included in the default list.

As for the rest of argument, I don't see why brand new names would be chosen over perfectly normal names that are associated with a previous version (it wouldn't be apparent to new players who weren't around in Generation II). With Red and Green being in the games, the convention of version-based names for NPCs has already been put in place.
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1. My Pokémon Red Trainer's Guide (instruction booklet) has screenshots with the player being adressed as Blue, and my FireRed booklet has screenshots of the player being called Fire, yet that didn't change the fact he had the canon name Red. So this could be the case again. You already said it: <<There are also official screenshots calling Lucas "Diamond", "Pearl" and "Plato". Every version's manual uses screenshots with the name corresponding to that version. It truly means nothing>>. So having this screenshot calling him Soul soesn't mean it will be his new canon name (although it proves I was wrong when I said they could leave it out of the list, although they could change it last time).

2. That's why I took into consideration to have "Chris" and "Kris" as you already suggested, although I propposed a slightly different way to use them. Not to mention that although I'm against the "this is Gold/Silver not Crystal remake" argument, at least for now, it seems that this is the approach Nintendo is having towards the remakes.
 
I still think they're going to get real names, at least when talking about the male and female protagonists, likely everything else will stay the same but since they are pulling a May/Brendan, Dawn/Lucas on us, they may as well just give them real names, rather than calling the Gold/Heart/Soul for whatever reason.
 
Ok, considering what everybody has said, lets put it like this:
The default name for the male player character is Gold
The default name for the female player character is either Soul or Heart
The default name for your rival is Silver

Now when your opposite gender counterpart comes they would probably be Chris for Boy, and Kris for Girl.

Im not talking about the lists by the way, Im just talking about default names.

So does that clear everything up? Or are there still more problems? Because I think everyone can agree on this one.
 
Blazaking EX said:
Ok, considering what everybody has said, lets put it like this:
The default name for the male player character is Gold
The default name for the female player character is either Soul or Heart
The default name for your rival is Silver

Now when your opposite gender counterpart comes they would probably be Chris for Boy, and Kris for Girl.

Im not talking about the lists by the way, Im just talking about default names.

So does that clear everything up? Or are there still more problems? Because I think everyone can agree on this one.
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Okay, discussion over. I'm with this guy. Move along. These are not the droids you are looking for. (Oh crap, I got that backwards)
 
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