Pokémon Nicknames: Solrock and Lunatone.

Keith Moon shows off his full moon

Solrock ( in Japanese: ソルロック “Solrock”) is a dual-type Rock and Psychic Pokémon. It does not have a gender. Solrock also does not evolve from, or into any other Pokémon. There is not a mega-evolution as of yet, however there is speculation that there may be a mega-evolution in the new Pokémon Sun and Moon game recently announced.

Likewise, Lunatone (in Japanese: ルナトーン “Lunatone”) is also a Rock/Psychic dual type, is genderless, and has no known evolution.

My favorite Lunatone name is “Keith” or  “Keith Moon” after the legendary drummer of The Who. Moon was arguably the greatest drummer in rock-and-roll history. He also had a very wild sense of humor, and was known for trashing hotel rooms. It is funny, when I was a teenager I thought that those antics were cool … but, thinking back … rock stars trashing hotel rooms is actually kind of sad. Pretty lame really.  Looking back, he was a troubled man. I loved the late Mr. Moon. He was genuinely funny and original. His alcoholism tended to go to extremes unfortunately.  I still admire his creativity though, and yes I digress.

You could name one “Moon Unit” after Frank Zappa’s daughter. She of the “Valley Girl” dialect. Gag-me-with-a-Moon?

I have also named them “Dark Side”or the cryptic all lower-case “dark-side-of” as a tribute to the famous Pink Floyd album “Dark Side of the Moon”. Perhaps “Floyd” is a possible nickname, as is other PF references such as “Ummagumma”. I will leave it to you to come up with Sailor Moon related names.

Maybe name it “Moonraker” after the James Bond film. How about “GoodNight” as in the famous children’s book “Goodnight Moon”. “Mack2Night” would be a reference to the old McDonald’s ad about the singing moon-head guy who imitated Bobby Darin.

I also like “June Spoon” after all the Tin-Pan-Alley era songwriters who composed so many of those Moon-in-June—I-Croon-We-Spoon rhyme schemes. (Why Ira Gershwin or Cole Porter never wrote songs about “Baboons” or “Walloons” I will never know.)

My favorite Solrock name is “Solaris” after the sci-fi novel by Polish author Stanislaw Lem.

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The novel was made into three movies, the most recent of which, was the 2002 film starring — ugh — George Clooney. I hate that elitist hypocrite, and the movie was panned, and lost a lot of money, but I will defend it. I thought it was unique, and had great storytelling. (trailer here) … not like most of Clooney’s crappy star vehicles. I remember walking out of the theater STUNNED by the end. My fellow movie goers talked to those lined up for the next show, and said “Well, it is DIFFERENT alright.”

Yes, I digress once again …

My other favorite Solrock name is “Solstice” as in the first official day of summer, and the longest day of the year. I have also used “June 21^st” in this vein. If you have both Solrock and Lunatone in your team, you could call them “Solstice” and “Equinox” respectively. Alternatively you could name them “SunnDay” and “MoonDay” or something cute like that.

As always my basic references: are Bulbapedia and my hazy Who concert memories.

Nice cosplay kids!

PS: Thank you to all my readers who pushed me over 100,000 views on my blog as of this weekend! Thank you. Yes, I know that there were only 128 views of my posts that did not have a photo of Haruna Kojima, but still … thanks!