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The language we play Pokémon in is not the language of the Pokémon world. "Sandslash" is jut the name from our perspective in a real world sense, people in the Pokémon world do not speak English, they speak Pokémon world languages. You will notice that nowhere in the games things are written with human roman letters, only text boxes and interface is in english/japanese/etc.
Actual objects inside the world don't have english text on them. In the anime we often see those characters. Unown, which look like our alphabet, are treated in the Pokémon world as mysterious hieroglyphs.
So, discussing over SANDslash is pointless, since we don't know what their language sounds like or what meanings they attach to names, just as its pointless to discuss dex entries calling Pikachu a "mouse" Pokémon. This is just for practicality sake, inside that universe we don't know the words they use. Real animals do not exist there.
