QotD: In the Pokemon world, what is the most appropriate way to train a Pokemon to recognize your name?

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The Question of the Day is a way to facilitate community discussion to help members ponder the unanswered questions of the world that are somehow relating to the hobby. Questions are many times open ended and up to interpretation. Feel free to post your thoughts in as much or as little detail as you’d like.

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Today’s Question:
QotD: In the Pokemon world, what is the most appropriate way to train a Pokemon to recognize your name?

Helpful considerations: Treats? Repetition? Discipline? More Gym Badges?

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Well, its the Pokemon world right? To recognize my name Id probably send it to an academy made for teaching pokemon human speech and commands. Even if my pokemon is remarkably dumb, Im sure the teachers would have teaching strategies to at bare minimum get it to recognize my name on sight. It would probably be like an etiquette boarding school for Pokemon only.

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Speaking only your name for every phrase, just as pokemon do.
:laughing:

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pokemon spearow gif | WiffleGif

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I read this question this morning and thought I’d contemplate it further on my walk through the park with the dogs. I realised though, I have never actually trained my dogs to associate my name with me and I’m not sure many people do either. They must however, naturally pick up and absorb that information on their own. As they do get excited when I say certain peoples names, they certainly recognise the word with a particular someone. Picking up certain words as incredible as it is for dogs, Pokemon are in another league.

The majority of Pokemon we see in the anime can understand the English language, I would say almost perfectly. Dogs however, cannot. This makes training a Pokemon to learn a human name much easier than a dog. I’d imagine after catching said Pokemon, speaking to it like it’s one of your own or a friend and just telling it your name would actually be enough for it to remember.

I fear if your Pokemon doesn’t learn quickly, A.J. would be willing to help.

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Amazing to hear the question of the day working as intended! I wonder if pokemon all have similar brain processing abilities to make this all work, seems unlikely that a joltik and a alakazam would, just on a physical level.

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Change your legal name to the name of your Pokémon. It may still not recognize you by that name, but it will say your name all the time nonetheless. /s

Greetz,
Quuador

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Just chiming in to say that the word “appropriate” in the title thread was a good move.

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I was hoping more animal knowledge would be shared. Maybe that word is scaring everyone away.

I’m an animal behavior/veterinarian student (primarily with canids), so while certainly no expert, I can hopefully add a bit of animal-related knowledge.

As you and frostypuppy mentioned, I’m sure each Pokemon species’ intellectual capacity would factor in here. Pokemon that can fully understand the lexicon, symbols, and other nuances of human language I would think could be simply told that your name is representative of you.

Assuming the majority of Pokemon that aren’t that intelligent are capable of discerning motion, visual, and acoustic cues like dogs can would be more difficult to teach.

In short, when you begin to teach a dog a new command, the vocal direction you choose in a vacuum is irrelevant. “Come,” “Stay,” etc. are very intuitive for humans (including for individuals that aren’t teaching the command) and as such are often used as they are meaningful to us. The dog will eventually assign meaning to these words, but not before associating something relevant to them with it.

As such, associating you with a name needs to be tied to something that has meaning to the dog or Pokemon. Dogs are individuals, and are enticed by different things. Just like Pokemon that have characteristics (e.g., likes to run, etc.), treats are often effective but some dogs associate more value through attention, or are selective with what treats are worth obeying for.

So before attempting to assign meaning to your name, you may need to have an ample supply of batteries for a Joltik, be ready to play many games of fetch with a rowdy growlithe, or lots of quality yarn for a litten. The point is that your enticement should be individualized.

Next, I’d assume your name needs to become a clicker of sorts. Clickers are often useful in training to help dogs make complex associations simpler. Before a dog can learn to stay, then come; it needs to know what “staying” is. Positive reinforcement is most effective, so a click immediately followed by your enticement of choice will over time make the “stay” command relevant.

In order for your Pokemon to associate you with your name, it needs to be incentivized to correlate your name to a meaningful event. As such, perhaps a possible approach would be to have the Pokemon learn what “come” means. Then, you and another trainer can each have your enticer, but the enticer is only given when your Pokemon comes to you. I.e., “Come to lyleberr” + ampharos comes to you = reward. “Come to lyleberr” + ampharos goes to the other person = no reward.

I felt like I’ve rambled for this Tedtalk long enough, haha. Hopefully that’s something remotely close to what you were looking for, and thanks to anyone who read through all of this :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thanks for all the explanation. Sounds like my pokedollars would be well spent with a training academy.

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That would probably be a wise investment indeed!

I’ll just make them watch me open my card arrival mail, seeing all the envelopes with my name on them must do the trick eventually

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Lol

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