>>34726318Grass is called that in Japanese, as well as in English, Italian, Korean, and Chinese. The Spanish, French, and German versions changed it to Plant.
I've made long posts on vp before about why Grass and Steel are called what they are, but it's like this. The Japanese words for "plant" and "metal' (shokubutsu and kinzoku) are mildly technical-sounding words that would sound strange as an elemental type name. The word for for "plant" is also 5 kana long, which was probably too long since all the original type names are no longer than 4 kana (Fairy is 5 kana, but that's so much later).
The words that most JRPGs would use for the plant and metal elements, "ki" and "kin" (literally "wood"/"tree" and "gold") which are taken from classical Chinese elements, would also be awkward in Pokemon, which doesn't use kanji, as these words in kana are too short and easily confused with other synonyms.
So Grass and Steel (Kusa and Hagane) where the best they thought of to work as generic representations of all plants and metals, and whose names in kana wouldn't cause any confusion.
