The Pokemon Company confirms that you’ve probably been pronouncing one legendary Pokemon’s name wrong for 20 years

Pokemon Emerald is, to this day, my favorite game in the series. I love Hoenn as a region and I think the story is one of the few that actually makes any semblance of sense. And as well as the Battle Frontier, it has one of the coolest legendaries ever: Rayquaza. But it turns out, a lot of us have been saying its name wrong all these years.

The Pokemon Worlds Championships 2025 concluded this weekend, and there was a handy note shown to all attendees and tweeted by the official Pokemon account: it’s pronounced ray-kway-zuh, not ray-kwah-zuh.

If you didn’t know, don’t worry – mispronouncing a strange Pokemon name isn’t as bad as your parents calling every one of the cute critters a Pikachu. But clearly someone at Pokemon HQ was miffed, because in the message shown to Worlds attendees, the kway is in all caps, so they really want us all to get it right from now on.

Now, I’ve looked at this tweet so many times already that if you put a gun to my head and asked me how I used to pronounce the name of the ozone dragon, I honestly couldn’t tell you. All I know now is that it’s ray-kway-zuh.

To be fair, this would be common knowledge to anyone who keeps up with all the Pokemon anime, as the name is spoken aloud in English and pronounced, quite clearly, as ray-kway-zuh. But, I stopped watching the movies after the Celebi one, so I’m quite behind on the lore. Luckily, we have a guide on how to watch Pokemon in order.

While you’re here, check out our ranking of the best Pokemon games.