My favourite starter of my favourite generation: Snivy!
Snivy’s main design influences are real-life vine snakes and the french monarchy prior to the revolution, which gives us a good amount to work with when coming up with nicknames.
Any good Snivy nickname is going to be at least a little fancy (unless you’re going for a subversive nickname). Having its name start with the letter S is nice because it is a snake, and because all of its evolutions’ names start as such. Names with meanings relating to snakes, plants, or nobility are all apt as well.
It’s also important to consider the longevity of a name. With Snivy, its evolutions’ design and naming motifs do not change very much, so names that are good for a Snivy will still be pretty good for Servine or Serperior. However, Serperior’s Pokédex entries give us something new to draw from, making reference to the Basilisk from real-world mythology.
One of my favourite names for a female Snivy is Sylvia. It’s Italian instead of French, but it is a very royal-sounding name, and it shares multiple sounds with Snivy’s original name. In addition, silva, which is the root word for Sylvia, means “wood, forest” in its original Latin. If we want the name to make more reference to Snivy’s French origins, we could go with Sylvie or Sylette, the French form and diminutive respectively. Sylvie also has the bonus of rhyming with Snivy.
As for a male Snivy, we could go with Silvio or Sylvius, the male version and original forms of Sylvia respectively. Sylvius is a sibilant name, which is good for a snake, and was also the name of a family of kings from Roman mythology.
Severus is another sibilant name that evokes royalty, and it matches up with Servine and Serperior perhaps even better than with Snivy. Sylvain is very nice; it’s a French name has a similar root meaning to Silvius, and includes the word “vain,” which is suited to the Snivy line. You could also give your male Snivy the prefix “sir”, which matches very well with Servine and Serperior. Sir Vincent would be a great name for a Servine, although if you’re playing in gen 5, the space would have to be removed to meet the character limit, or you could shorten it to Sir Vince. As for Serperior you could go with Sir Pierre.
I hope you found this helpful in picking a name for your Snivy, whether you took one from my list or made up your own based on this article! Please tell me your favourite nickname for the Snivy line in the comments!
Next I will cover the Oshawott line! I actually picked Oshawott for my current White playthrough to shake things up a bit, so I’m excited to share some fun ideas I’ve had! Thanks for reading!
Edit: I mixed up the Pokédex numbers and I’ll actually be covering the Tepig line next, with Oshawott after that. Whoops!
References
- http://www.behindthename.com – the meaning of any name mentioned in this article was found here
- https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Snivy_(Pokémon)
- https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Servine_(Pokémon)
- https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Serperior_(Pokémon)
Pokémon Nicknames 