>>56493274The ones in leaked ROM builds from 1997 and 1999 have Japanese names, though some of them are clearly low effort placeholders like マンボー1 (Manbo1; "Sunfish1") or even ハッパ (Happa; "Leaf"). Others seem more set in stone like ツインズ (Tsuinzu; "Twins"). But there are a ton of designs from a repository that don't have any information associated with them, just sprites. Naming something, especially Pokémon which are part of a commercial product, requires legal freeway. That's why we call the series Pokémon and not Capsule Monsters/Capmon. Names would be something thought of and finalized in the later stages of development. You can even find an instance of ミズオウ (Mizuou; Quagsire's initial name) in the Japanese ROMs for Gold and Silver, not that it ever appears in-game. But NoA localized it as Wooster nonetheless.
And when it comes to localized names, I refuse to accept anything that comes from fans. What makes this content special is that it was REAL and OFFICIAL. If we started having any random person interpret things, it becomes fanfiction. I don't care about HelixChamber's fan-made front sprites and names for cut Gen I Pokémon, there's no point. There will never be any universal agreement over fan decisions. There are text documents showing how the name localization process worked, and there was a lot of back and forth with legal teams and Game Freak. We don't have enough background experience or information to properly name everything.
