The Pokemon GO craze is in full swing and if you thought trainer shootouts, freak accidents, and stumbling upon dead bodies is the peak of craziness, wait until you hear of the latest phenomenon induced by Niantic Labs’ mega-popular mobile game. Namely, it seems that people have fully embraced the lifestyle and culture of a Pokemon trainer and have actually started naming their babies after their favorite pocket monsters. By far the most popular Pokemon name among young parents in the States is Eevee, followed by Onix and Onyx. BabyCenter.com reports that Eevee has advanced 1,377 places in their list of popular baby girl names since the summer of 2015.
Sure, websites aimed at mostly entertaining young parents aren’t the most credible source on social trends and phenomena but you shouldn’t be surprised if you start meeting teenage Eevees in a couple of decades. The trend of naming Pokemon actually wasn’t started by Pokemon GO but was instead reawakened after a dormant period. More specifically, back in 2012, a couple of Japanese politicians went on record to publicly criticize Japanese parents naming their children after fictive pet monsters. Granted, it’s not like there’s a whole bunch of Pokemon names which can viably be used for baby humans but there’s no doubt that most people will be strongly opinionated on this subject.
As for the game itself, players are still waiting for Niantic to fix the so-called three-step bug which makes tracking wild Pokemon virtually impossible. A plethora of external tools designed to help frustrated Pokemon GO players track rare Pokemon has already emerged on the Play Store though some of them already got in trouble with Google for looking too similar to Niantic’s game. By far the most useful and famous example is that of PokeNotify, a free Android Pokemon tracker which got pulled by Google yesterday for allegedly violating the company’s “app impersonation” policy. And while we’re waiting for an update that’ll fix Pokemon GO’s major bugs, Niantic is promising us a bunch of new features like trading and second generation Pokemon while adding that it’s currently focused on rolling out the game worldwide.