Lists of names are often stored as fixed length lists without direct text pointers. So instead the game just has an index number and interprets it as "Get me item number 50". You can recognize this if all names in the list are padded with zeroes or something else so they all have the same length. Is this possibly the case here?

Which game and system are you working on?

If it's a fixed-length list there is nothing than can be done besides major re-programming. It would probably a simple hack to change the amount of bytes of each entry, but then you'd have to relocate the whole table and adjust all entries to be padded to that new length. That would require a lot of free space etc.

Deal with the space they have \

If you use the English version, they've conveniently expanded all those lists for you. How nice of them. Since the items/Pogeymanz in Japanese don't need more than 5 characters, you'll have to make due if you insist on using the Japanese version.

Sadly, if the hack is only for the Japanese version, then you're pretty much screwed, unless you want to reverse-engineer the English version, and find what they changed around to allow for the longer names.

Using a english rom wont be possible at all,the japanese pokemon hacking community is like 10 times more advanced then aynone here,they made changes I can only dream of doing...well,reverse engineering...I dont know how I should start with that,and im such a "noob" that even If I were to find anythign with randomly changing EVERYTHING I see...Id not know how to proceed then :/
Well,thats it I guess,choppy names are still good to recognize,making it playable

You can get a certain knowledge out of these observations, but they only ever are theories. You don't know what happens until you look at the ASM closely. However, having some experience, the case is as follows:

• The name is stored in RAM. The allotted length of it is five or six characters' worth of bytes.
• There may be other, unrelated data that comes after the name which you're now happily overwriting.
• The name is read back to display five characters only. The gender symbol is statically placed after the last character.
• For you to expand the name means to find some other, unused space in RAM and out the name there. Make sure it is saved. Then change every menu coding to accommodate for how many characters you want.

This is no task anybody should ever be doing by hand on a ROM anyway. These kind of changes are shaky and require a whole lot of experience and knowledge about the game. At best, you might be able to find many routines and change them, but you won't know when another one pops up that uses some obscure means to read the player's name. This is basically a dead end except you know exactly what you're doing, the original game's code handles things nicely and there are lots of RAM to shift things around.

cYa,

Tauwasser