Quiz: Do You Know The Meaning Behind These Pokémon Names?
Image: Nintendo Life/Pokémon/Pexels

Did you know that most Pokémon names are puns? Yes, you did, but we had to intro this whole quiz somehow. Yup, there are over 1,000 puns of varying quality in the Pokédex these days, and most of them are different from the original Japanese puns... meaning that there are probably at least 2,000 puns in total between Japanese and English versions of Pokémon, and even more when you factor in all the other languages the games have been localised into. That's insane!

But do you know what all the puns and clever wordplay are? Sure, it's easy to figure out ones like Charizard (char + lizard) or Haunter (because, um, it's a ghost), but we've picked out some of the greatest and most obscure Pokémon names to test your knowledge.

Hop(pip) into the comments when you're done and let us know how you did!

Do You Know The Meaning Behind These Pokémon Names?
Image: Nintendo Life/Pokémon/Pexels

The answer is They're both named after the animal that inspired them.

Yeah, that was a VERY soft ball, but hey — not all Pokémon names are clever puns.

Results

You scored x out of 20.

  • 0-6: Sounds like you need to go back to school, by which we mean the "name origin" section of Bulbapedia!
  • 7-13: You missed a few hard ones, but you did pretty well -- it's a tricky quiz!
  • 14-20: You're the champion (of puns)! Nicely done.

We'll admit that quite a few of these answers were things that we learned while researching this quiz — and we learned a LOT. Perhaps enough for another similar quiz in the future, if you liked this one...