Basic Trope: Fictional creatures are only able to say their own name.
- Straight: The Tropana is a species of birds only able to say their name, "Tropana".
- Exaggerated: Every living thing on Earth communicates by only saying their name. EVERY. LIVING. THING.
- Downplayed: The Tropana speaks normal English and their name is a Verbal Tic in most senses.
- Justified: Tropanas were named after the sound they made.
- Inverted:
- Tropanas are capable of full human speech, but they are forbidden to say their own name.
- Bob can only say the name of whoever or whatever he's talking to.
- Subverted: A character assumes the bird's name is "Tropana", since it's the only thing is says. Turns out it's a Parrot.
- Double Subverted:
- A character assumes the bird's name is "Tropana", since it's the only thing is says. Turns out it's a Parrot, but the locals call it a "Tropana."
- Then the character meets the parrot's owner and it turns out that "Tropana" is the parrot's name.
- Parodied:
- A new species of Tropana-mon is named %&$#?@!. The researcher explains that that's the sound they make.
- All animals in the work vocalize their names, so dogs go "Dog!" and pigeons coo "Pigeon". Even the humans can only say "Human!"
- Zig Zagged:
- On some episodes, Tropanas can only say their name; others, they make normal animal sounds and in yet others they speak English.
- Tropanas actually have a very detailed and articulate language: it's just that "Tropana' is their equivalent the word "the" and the rest of it is too high or low in pitch for humans to hear.
- Averted: Tropanas make regular bird sounds.
- Enforced: In the original dub, the Tropanas only said the Japanese word for something icky. Rather than translate, the American distributor dubbed the harmless nonsense word used for the bird's name.
- Lampshaded: "How come all that bird ever says is its own name?"
- Invoked: Bob purposely only says the word "Bob".
- Exploited: Alice grabs a Tropana and gets it to speak its name, which happens to be the password to the secret base.
- Defied: One of the Tropanas teaches himself how to speak fluent Japanese.
- Discussed: "If you hear an animal make a sound, it's probably the name of that animal."
- Conversed: "I can understand animals named after the sound they produce, but animals saying their name even though it's clearly based on a word of the english language? Ridiculous!"
- Deconstructed:
- A new Tropana-mon species can speak English, because its name contains the entire English language.
- The species can't communicate effectively because their 'language' only consists of a single word with a very small amount of syllables, all of this also being true for any scientists hoping to study the species and their methods of communication.
- Reconstructed:
- A little girl points at a Tropana and calls it a Parrot; all the Tropanas start saying "Parrot" instead, and the bird is later renamed.
- The species has multiple ways of communication much like any real species would have, including body language, pheromones, the use of emphasis and emotion when saying certain syllables, and possibly more.
- Played For Laughs: The Chrononhotonthologos is a species of birds only able to say their name, "Chrononhotonthologos"
- Played For Drama: Bob can only say "Bob". As such, when he tries to give the password to introduce himself in an enemy base, he says "Bob". He is immediately recognized and brutally murdered.
Pokémon Speak-Poke!-Pokémon Speak!
