Pokemon was created in 1996, by Satoshi Tajiri. It's a media franchise published and owned by Nintendo. It started off with the Gameboy as role-playing games by Game Freak. It is the second most successful video game based franchised, with Mario bing the first. Pokemon has been merchandised into anime, manga, playing cards, toys, books, ect. The franchise celebrated its tenth year anniversery in 2006 (woo!) and by 2010, the video games have made more then 200 million copies (woah, that's a lot!)
The name Pokemon came from the japanese brand, 'Pocket Monsters' (ポケットモンスター
Poketto
Monsutā?)
Pokemon franchise has come up with over 600 unique and special names for each pokemon and made all the names plural and singular, as in, 'One Pikachu' or 'Many Pikachu'