who nicknames their pokemon?

I tend to nickname my Pokemon after authors. Who knows why, but they feel really powerful then. Unless it's a Pikachu. Then it's Chichu. Always.

[Magpie]

Most things I nickname though, purely because as a friend said to me once, calling your Pikachu "Pikachu" is like calling your dog "Dog".

So true~

I've always named my team, just because it feels more personal. I'm a pretty nick-namey person anyway... anyone who works with me or knows me fairly well could vouch for that. They all have names. Can't say it's very professional to shout stuff like 'Zippy! Checkouts please!' but still

I tend to go for names from Mythology, or silly names. Sometimes, names just pop into my head straight away, like as soon as I hatched my Rotom the other day, I knew he had to be called Rizzle

Well, according to my own strange powers of obsessiveness, I must nickname every Pokemon I have with punctuation, or else I refuse to use them.
That's the reason I have a shiny Lucario just sitting away in a box.

For me, I have to nickname them, for me naming my PKMN is half the game. The only ones I don't nickname are legendaries because for some reason it just feels weird for me to name them. Big, mighty creatures getting awkward names from me? I was planning to name Colbalion and the team after the characters they are based on, but eh, Thundurus would be alone of having his original name.

Some have planned names and some don't. Such as Snivy, I knew I had to pick a really pretty name that I love, so in the end he was named Caleb. Otherwise some random name that pops into my head, such as my Galvantula being named James. Some occasions calls for names with some meaning, my Lampent being named Photios which means light. Sometimes even references such as my Rufflet named Jane Doe after Soldier from Team Fortress 2.

I nickname my main team, usually with 'human' names (otherwise it gets too cheesy because I'm not good at making up names). If I'm just trying to complete the Pokedex, I usually won't.

If I'm planning to trade a Pokemon, though, I'll nickname it unless the other person asks me not to. I feel like I should since they won't be able to rename it, but I'm just weird like that

Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I used to name my pokemon extremely seriously, after gods and mythological creatures and whatnot, but these days I can just as easily give them a very silly name. For instance, my heart gold team consisted of Quack, Mr. Squishy, Mr. Burny, Blackie, Pierre and Gorgonzola.