112 Saidon (Rhydon)

SaidonSAIDON

サイドン

Pokemon name meaning:

サい(犀) rhinoceros

don – Spanish Portuguese and Italian honorific title for a high ranking person.

Notes

A Japanese Pokemon name-meaning wiki, while affirming the Latin-language don meaning, states that “don” is also a frequently used suffix for monsters. Possibly this is a Japanese fictional convention, perhaps based on “mastodon”.

It has also been suggested that the “don” is taken from Mafia usage, though this seems unlikely to the present writer. The use of “king” names for final evolutions (in Japanese either オー [katakana for 王] or キング) seems clearly parallel to this use of “don”.

About Cure Dolly

Precure! — Dolly volley! A small doll that can sometimes transform into a shining defender.

One response »

  1. In Japanese “don” is also a polite form of “san”, still used nowadays in the context of fairy-tales with speaking animals, in the same way animals in Aesop’s fables would call each other “Master Fox” or “Master Dog”. (I haven’t heard it in any other context, but according to the Gjiten dictionary: “polite suffix used after a person’s name (often of an apprentice; used much more broadly in southern Kyushu)”. I don’t know either whether this “don” came from the Portuguese or is just a coincidence.)

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