How did Missingno. get its name?

Question

Yeah, yeah. We all know good 'ol Missingno.

But how did it get its name? Since this was a programming quirk, what are the odds of getting a name that literally means Missing Number?

Any answers?

Comments

Iirc it got its name bc it was originally a pokemon but while being removed from the coding a glitch occured

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Originally there were supposed to be 190 Pokemon. This explains why there are exactly 39 species of Missingno.

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Missingno.:
Missing + corrupted # (number)

Missingno. is a "missing number" in the PokeDex in other terms.

Answer 1

It is not 100% clear - like Missingno in general - but logic and evidence suggests that the developers gave it its name.

Missingno isn't a real glitch Pokemon, in that it was (most likely) an intentional addition by the developers. Missingno. is, based on everything we know, a placeholder for the 39 remaining index numbers that aren't occupied by the real 151 Pokemon. There are 190 index numbers, and since only 151 of them were actual Pokemon, there were 39 left behind that became Missingno.

It is not known for sure if the developers originally intended for these 39 slots to contain Pokemon, but according to a Smogon user who claims to have had a discussion with Shigeki Morimoto, there were supposed to be 190 Pokemon, but some were "saved for later."

It would have been silly to leave the game to make a junk name for the spare 39 spots, so the developers named them Missingno, or けつばん aka Ketsuban.

Comments

Thanks!

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Those 31 were actually gen 2 Pokémon, hence the 'saved for later'.  An example, Heracross is near Pinsir. When traded to Gen 2 they actually become their counterparts

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That's not conclusive evidence they're Gen II Pokemon. According to Bulbapedia, Missingnos become those Pokemon because they follow PokeDex order when they're traded, and thus Gen II interprets them as what it does. We don't know for sure which Pokemon occupied those slots (if any at all).

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I guess, but I have heard a lot that they are gen 2 Pokémon.

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http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_Pokémon_by_index_number_(Generation_I)
All of the pokemon listed as missingno were the remaining 39 not used in red, blue and yellow.