Pikachu gets renamed (in Hong Kong)

[jigokutamago]

Ka-pi96 said:

jigokutamago said:

This is the problem. While this is true in Cantonese, it's actually the opposite in Mandarin. What they are doing is basically changing it to what Mandarin Chinese speaking population has been calling Pikachu. The reasoning behind the name change would probably be so that they would not need a specialized translations for Cantonese considering Cantonese speakers can still read Mandarin, despite a different pronunciation. Their concerns are understandable though. Imagine getting a name changed into one that would be pronunced correctly in Spanish but different in English.

Could they have used the same characters/pronunciation in the first place? I suppose it's a bit late for that now, but they really should have had it the same from the beginning.

Really sucks for Cantonese speakers though. It's bad for characters to change names anyway, but one that's been around this long and is as popular as Pikachu would just be really annoying.

I think it is one or the other. They had to choose between having the same pronunciation or having the same characters. They initually chose to have the same pronunciation. Now they changed it to have the same characters.