Ask The Tropers

I think the rule is to go with the most recent name.

Maybe Leaf/Green? Let's Go is an AU, and she did have a beta design in R/B/G that went unused.

Someone just changed all mentions of Leaf on Characters.Super Smash Bros Brawl 32 To 39 to Green as well.

What was her default name in FR/LG?

^ There is none but the closest fans had was "Leaf", which was also used on a piece of recent merchandise.

I could see using "Leaf" for her FRLG design and "Green" for her LGPLGE design until we get something confirmed, but afaik no other character has two different names.

Blue Oak does, or at least he does in the Adventures manga—in Japan he's Green and the girl is Blue, while outside Japan he's Blue and the girl is Green.

In Smash though Red was just labeled Pokemon Trainer and still is labeled Pokemon Trainer. This goes double for Leaf/Green.

Link: https://www.smashbros.com/en_US/blog/index.html?category=cat02_fighter_33-35

The Smash pages need reverting back to Pokemon Trainer. Now for the Let's Go games, the games officially launch in the US tomorrow, so we should wait one more day before we update any English names.

^^ That's a Dub Name Change. I meant two names for the same character. For example, Lyra would count if Word of God said she was a redesigned Kris.

^ The game isn't out yet? I thought maybe it was out today in some regions since I've been seeing a lot of stuff posted online outside of leaks.

^^ Smash related info should probably just use "Pokemon Trainer" unless their names get confirmed in Ultimate and simply call them the male and female trainer.

As I said on Bulbapedia, the character's Japanese name is important to all this, as the FRLG character was recently officially named in Japanese.

• If the Let's Go character is named リーフ (Leaf) in Japanese, she is unambiguously the same character.
• If the Let's Go character is named ブルー (Blue)^note the names "Blue" and "Green" were switched overseas in Japanese, she is unambigously a different character.
• If the Let's Go character has neither of those names, we probably can't say for certain whether she's the same character.

If the two are separate characters, then the Let's Go character's tropes would probably go under Characters.Pokemon Protagonists And Rivals, as she plays a de facto "past protagonist" role similar to the Let's Go incarnation of Red.

^ So you're saying she's a different character because she has a different name, like with Kris and Lyra? I don't know if that's what they were going for. If so, Green and Leaf look really, really similar to one another.

^ Leaf was based on Green (JP Blue), similar to how Lyra was based on Kris, or, crossing continuities, Ash on Red. They're different characters with similar looks.

^ Technically speaking, Adventures Green and FRLG Leaf were all based on the unused Gen 1 female trainer. If Let's Go Green is a separatecharacter, she is also based on the unused trainer.

^^ My argument is that the only thing linking Let's Go Green to Leaf (rather than to the unused trainer or Adventures Green) is a vague design similarity, which isn't enough to call them the same character unless they share a name. Because FRLG Leaf received an official Japanese name during Let's Go's development, it would be weird for the new games to not use that name if they were the same character.

^ I wouldn't say it's vague. Red is Red even with black hair and gray eyes, Blue is still Blue even with his slight design differences. It makes sense that Green is supposed to be Leaf.

A few (English-speaking) fans have pretty much confirmed that Let's Go Green is named Blue in Japanese. This matches Adventures Green and the de facto name for the unused Gen 1 trainer, and does not match Leaf.

^ You're thinking of Leaf as if she is the unused Gen 1 trainer, which appears to not be the case. Leaf's relation to the Gen 1 trainer is the same as Lyra's relation to Kris, and to claim otherwise is speculation. Unless you have a source to back it up.

^ The dub name change was expected. The Japanese games already have a "Blue" after all. She's Blue in Japan, Green internationally.

What was the trainer's Japanese name in FR/LG?

^ Leaf? The only text dump I know of is of the English names.

Anyway, looking at the history of Pokémon Protagonists and Rivals, people keep on changing the folder from Green (Blue)/"Leaf"  to Green (Blue) and back. Maybe the page should be locked.

^ A lock would be pointless, as I'm the only troper outright claiming they're different people, and I'm deliberately not editing the page until more info comes out.

The cause of the edit war is people arguing about whether "Leaf" should be in the folder name if they are the same person.

As a sidenote, Green's Japanese name is now confirmed to be ブルー (Blue), but we pretty much knew that already.

Bumping this discussion because of further fan developments.

• Bulbapedia covers both as the same character, but uses the name "Green" only when discussing LGPE. The FRLG character remains "Leaf".
• Serebii outright claims the two to be different characters.

Neither is an official source, but this serves as a reminder that fansites don't necessarily agree on the matter.

^ It'd probably be best to use both names—Leaf for the FRLG character and Green for the LGPLGE character. But the question is should they be in the same folder or not then.

^ As there's no evidence of them being the same, and they have different Japanese names, I'd split them. Which is what I've mostly been saying since the start.