this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
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[–] Cintari@lemmy.world 6 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Not according to an interview by the creator of Pikachu, Atsuko Nishida:

“Since it was an Electric-type Pokémon, I thought ‘pika‘ [the expression of light flashing in Japanese].

https://web.archive.org/web/20211108083831/https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-news/creator-profile-the-creators-of-pikachu/

[–] SorryQuick@lemmy.ca 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)
[–] embed_me@programming.dev 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Its light in general, not lightning

[–] SorryQuick@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 hours ago

“pika” on its own is a sudden flash of light. This onomatopeia is very old (edo era old). What kind of light flashes do you think you’d find 400 years ago? There was pretty much just lightning. Not to be confused with the repeated “pika pika” which like the other commenter said indicates more of a glimmer or shiny and is way more common today.