I name them after my friends.

Definitely, it's a big part of the fun for me. At some point though, I get lazy and make bullshit names up, but I do think about the names for my main team and any Pokemon I may want to use.

Sometimes I give them a name but not always. When I name them it's usually something obvious like naming a flying Pokemon Sky.

Those aren't the same people

@donchipotle: TO ME THEY ARE!

No, it's dumb.

I didn't when I was a kid because I was super obsessive about it, but now I think it's hilarious. I crack myself up when I boot up old Pokemon games and find a random Pokemon named "Freakums" or something.

My new policy is to nickname everything except legendaries, which are technically supposed to be one-of-a-kind in your world. But then there was the one time I named my Mewtwo from LeafGreen "Sophocles" so I dunno...I like to nickname them now.

As long as the names are creative at least. Getting bullcrap named Pokemon is a real buzzkill.

EDIT: It does cause some problems when I'm not familiar with the newer Pokemans though. Here's the aforementioned "Freakums" that made me hysterical. I still don't know what it's really called.

I don't bother naming mine either. I simply prefer their native names. I always hated it when you'd trade for Pokemon in game and get something with the most ridiculous name.

I never name my pokemon. Part of it is that I like using a ton of different pokemon and giving them names would make it more confusing (espeicially in older games). Also I'm just not very creative.

I always name my Pokemon. It's been a simple but fun way to personalise them.

@mormonwarrior: I think it's called Shellos

Actually I'm gonna factcheck before posting...

...

Yup, it's Shellos! Freakums is a really funny and fitting nickname though.

I usually name them after characters in a recent game I've played and liked. Right now I'm using names from Tales of Xillia. I only name them after I get my main team of 6 together though, I don't just name every single pokemon I catch, just my A-team. And sometimes I just give them inappropriate names, however X/Y has a pretty serious filter on stuff you can use as names now which is kind've a bummer, I used to name the rival "Fuck" because for some reason it makes me laugh, yes I'm 12.

I usually give one of each type a nickname. The more punderful the better. Maybe it's just because I really like bad puns.

When I am doing competitive breeding I give them serial numbers for easy sorting.

Man they censor nicknames now? When the pokemon bank finally launches it might be difficult for me to transfer my ditto named Slut.

While that's probably a joke, I literally did this while breeding for good EV's to take on the World Tournament in B/W2 because it made them easier to differentiate. My Starmie is called Twenty-six.

I like the idea of nicknames, but I never give them any. Like I would like to call Squirtle something like Squirts, but when it evolves I'll have to rename it to have one that is appropriate to its evolution.

Normally no, occasionally yes. The only Pokemon I have named in X so far were my Eevee's (Electro, Hydro, Flamey, Espy, Umby & Freezo, Mossy & Slyeo) but that was mainly so that I don't mess up the evolutions.

Yes, I always name my pokemon and it always varies in what I name them. Sometimes I'll name them after some of my favorite characters, and other times I'll name them like Digimon, and other times I'll just name them whatever their actual names are but backwards. So for example Pikachu becomes Uhcakip. I'm just totally random with it.

For me it's an all or nothing thing. I either name every single Pokemon I catch in that game, or none of them. In the earlier generations I named everything. Come fourth gen I stopped. However, during the pre-release hype fest, many of the revealed and/or leaked pokemon instantly gave me ideas for names. So rather than saying "Hmm, if I were naming my pokemon, I would totally name this helioptile "Yuuko."" I just went ahead and decided to name them all this generation.

But I can't just name it the first thing that pops into my head, it has to be something that relates to it in one way or another. Most of what I've come up with has been anime or Dark Souls related.