List of Pokémon categories

In a 's Pokédex information, the category (Japanese:  classification) is a name which identifies the Pokémon based on one of its defining biological characteristics. Most often, the defining traits are part of the Pokémon’s physiology, special abilities, or behavior. It was previously also known as species.

Because of how brief and uninformative the description of a Pokémon often is in its category, and how little the category relates to other data, it is not often regarded as an important piece of information about a Pokémon.

Before Generation III, the category was shown by just seeing the Pokémon, rather than upon catching it.

In Pokémon games prior to Generation III, the character limit for a category name was ten characters. This has since increased from Generation III onwards, with the longest English category name being observed to be thirteen characters long. In other languages, the longest category name is 's German category "Elektrohörnchen" which is 15 characters long. This includes spaces but does not include "Pokémon".

Trivia

 * Several Pokémon have had their categories altered between generations. This is primarily due to character limitations in earlier Pokémon games., as an example, was originally the "TinyTurtle Pokémon". It was later listed as the "Tiny Turtle Pokémon".
 * The categories present in are cut off in early English releases of the games, most specifically those made up of more than one word with a space in between. This causes Pokémon like Pidgey to be listed as "Tiny Pokémon" rather than "Tiny Bird Pokémon". Internal game data lists the category the same as it appears in  and other games, indicating a glitch in the Pokédex where a blank space is confused for the terminating byte for the name. This was addressed in later releases of the game.
 * is the only Pokémon with multiple categories.
 * The previous term, "species", should not be confused with a Pokémon species, since several different Pokémon can be identified by the same category in the Pokédex, no matter how distantly related. This term should also not be confused with the real world definition of.
 * Eight species of Pokémon are known as the Dragon Pokémon, making it the category with the most Pokémon species.
 * Wimpod and Golisopod's categories in Japanese comprise a pun: the kana (そうこうポケモン soukou Pokémon) can be interpreted as either 倉皇 (bustle or hurry) or 装甲 (armored).