Chirp!

"No one here fights very well. But I had fun anyways."

(She left behind more than a few friendly rivalries when they set out on the road.)

"We'll find more entertaining fights as we go, I bet."

"In the championships, maybe."

"And we'll have to go through Viridian Forest to get to Pewter after this. Might meet someone in there."

"Sounds fun."

They can start walking again.

"Do you think you might want to see Mr. Brown again, while we're in the city?" she asks after a while.

"Yeah! He was kinda boring sometimes, but he was nice. And - "

Her thoughts skitter a bit. "...Uh how do I refer to people in human? Like, specific other humans or pokemon? There's that leafeon I like there, but the nice leafeon, not the annoying one, and I dunno how humans tell everyone else apart?"

"Call them by name, typically. Or title, if that's unique enough, but names are usually more so. Like, Professor Oak is the only Professor in Pallet, so you could say either Oak or Professor and people would know who you meant. But if you wanted to refer to me, you would have to call me Ellie, because there are like a dozen Junior Research Assistants."

"Huh! I didn't know that!"

"Ellie is a pretty name!"

"Thanks."

"We could come up with one for you too, if you wanted."

Trill! "I do!" Giggle. "People should be able to brag about me by name."

"Okay! So for humans, names are given in a couple different ways. It can be something that sounds nice, a word that happens to mean something else, or the name of a different person you want to reference or honor. Sometimes multiple of those at once."

"Hm! All of those sound good... It should definitely be pretty, but also something else - but I don't know what I'd want my name meaning, or if there's anyone other than you I'd want to honor..."

"Well, virtue names can be a good starting point. And you can translate them into different languages and maybe find some sounds you like, too."

"What's a virtue name?"

"A name that's a virtue, like Hope or Patience."

"Patience doesn't sound like me at all. I'd say a virtue would be something like 'Fierce' or 'Intelligent.'"

"Fierce can be bold or brave or daring. Intelligent could be quick or clever or smart. If we look at Old Kantonese..." she pulls out her phone and fiddles with it. "Fierce gets us... hm, not much. Yuu, maybe. For intelligent- ah, lots more. There's Kei, basically a direct translation. A couple variations on smart and beautiful, Michiko, Chika... I can look into other regions, too."

She hums. "Maybe a bit more, yeah..."

Ellie continues listing of names as she scrolls through, occasionally running off into tangents if she finds something neat and Eevee expresses interest in a derivation.

Lots of these are very pretty, but Eevee doesn't feel strongly drawn to most names... She ends up thinking she'll do just a virtue name, but a real virtue, not Patience. This ends up a debate between things like 'Clever', 'Valiant', and 'Intrepid' ("Are virtue names all nouns?") or 'Curiosity', 'Sojourner'...

Virtues are usually qualities or states, so yeah. Nothing says she can't detour to a related verb or descriptor if she wants to.

She tilts her head. "I think I like Curiosity and Intrepid best," she decides. "But I don't know which one's better."

Hum. "Of the two of those, I like Intrepid better. You can change later if you find something you like more, too."

She laughs. "I'll be Intrepid, then! Intrepid Ellie's Eevee..." She tilts her head. "Ellievee would be a cool name too actually."