What was the original working name for the Pokémon project before Pocket Monsters?

The original working name for the Pokémon project was Capsule Monsters.

Satoshi Tajiri’s early concept centered on creatures that could be stored, carried, and released, reflecting influences from Japanese monster shows and capsule toys. The title Capsule Monsters captured that idea during the project’s early development at Game Freak.

The name proved difficult to trademark, so the team moved through shortened forms such as Capumon before settling on Pocket Monsters. Outside Japan, “Pokémon” became the familiar abbreviated form. The accented é helped distinguish the brand in international markets and signaled that the word was a stylized contraction rather than an ordinary English phrase.

The name change does not mean the concept changed completely. The final games still revolved around compact devices, portable creatures, and exchanging Pokémon between players. The project’s long development period also allowed the team to refine the battle system, world, creatures, and two-version structure before release. Capsule Monsters is therefore a development-history fact, not the title of a commercially released Pokémon game.