The Pokémon anime follows the adventures of Ash Ketchum, a Pokémon trainer from Pallet
town who travels the world engaging in Pokémon battles.
The franchise is undoubtedly a huge cultural icon and is something pretty much everybody
in the Western world has heard of.
However, did you know that Ash is not the trainer's original name?
The story behind Ash's original name is a rather interesting one and revolves around
what the famous trainer is called over in show's country of origin Japan.
In the Japanese versions of Pokémon media, Ash is instead called "Satoshi" and the reasoning
behind choosing this name was far from random!
Satoshi is in fact named after Satoshi Tajiri, Pokémon's creator and CEO of Game Freak,
the developers of most of the Pokémon video games.
Way before the anime, the whole Pokémon franchise originated as two video games for Nintendo's
Game Boy system - the Japanese-only Pokémon Red and Green.
Satoshi spent 6 years working on the games and was inspired by his childhood hobby of
collecting insects.
He thought it would be cool if children could collect creatures like he did but in an all
new, modern way, and this motivation then saw the creation of the Pokémon games and
everything that followed.
To commemorate Satoshi's hard work, Satoshi was selected as one of the default names for
the main character in the original Japanese games.
Then, when the games were turned into an anime the following year, the name Satoshi was then
made the trainer's official name and it's been that way ever since.
That's not all though!
There's also a similar story behind the name for Ash's rival Gary Oak.
Shigeru Miyamoto, the famous creator behind classic Nintendo titles like Mario, The Legend
Of Zelda and Donkey Kong, assisted Satoshi with the original games' development.
During this time, Satoshi and Miyamoto became close and comparable to Ash's Japanese name
being named after Satoshi, Gary's Japanese name is named after Shigeru.
Over in Japan, Gary Oak is instead called "Shigeru Okido", with this being one of the
default names in the games and then going on to be Gary's official name in the anime.
As for the story behind the English names for Ash's and Gary's, things are more open
to debate.
One thing that's known for sure though, is that Ash's surname was created by localisers
4Kids to be a pun on the phrase "Catch 'em", with this mirroring the show's popular English
catchphrase "Gotta catch 'em all".
4kid's created this catchphrase due to wanting to include a tagline for marketing purposes
into the theme song.
They went through various different phrases before settling on "Gotta catch 'em all",
with one of these instead being "Catch 'em if you can".
As for Ash's first name, it speculated that this could be a subtle reference to Satoshi,
as the letters in Ash's name can be found in the name Satoshi.
Another explanation is that the localisers decided to name Ash after a type of tree called
"ash tree" and then continued with this theme for his rival's name Gary "Oak".
Oak, of course, being another tree reference.
As for what Ash and Gary are named in other languages, according to the Pokémon Wiki
Bulbapedia, most territories decided to pick the English names.
Some regions though, particularly in Asia such China and Korea, used the Japanese ones.
It's not just Ash and Gary though, Pokémon has changed many of the names in the anime
and games to sound less Japanese.
Additionally, whilst 4Kids was in charge of the English version of the show, from 1998
to 2005, many other Japanese themes would be changed for Western audiences.
For example, most Japanese foods such were changed to foods more recognizable to western
audiences.
These led to scenes like this having Brock call the food things like "jelly filled donuts"
instead of "rice balls".
4Kids would also edit the food out and replace them with more Western food, such as sandwiches.
Other name changes include the Cerulean city gym leader Kasumi, who became Misty, the Pewter
city gym leader Takeshi, who became Brock, and Team Rocket members Musashi and Kojiro,
who became Jesse and James.
In fact, localizers have adjusted the names of many of the major characters in the franchise,
including the names of many of the Pokémon themselves.
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