@simplersimon we had a cat we named Tom Petty, as in tom cat and pet the cat and TP and the Heartbreakers. We smiled at our cleverness while we knew those around us were groaning inwardly but smiled politely.
I’m allergic to cats, dogs, hamsters, anything cute, etc… However my wife has bought me three stuffed animals; two dogs and a squirrel. In order of receiving them:
First dog - Redrum
Second dog - Slobber Knocker
Squirrel - Stu
@trisk When I was a teenager my mom got a cat and I named it “cat”. I told her why give it a real name if it won’t come when you call it anyway? That cat and I never liked each other.
@trisk My sister named her cat Kitty, but only because she somehow couldn’t think of ANYTHING better and gave up. But… I named my cat Koshka, which is just Russian for “cat,” so I’m not really one to talk.
We usually take a while and find something that seems to fit them well. Right now we have Ishmael the tuxedo cat, Roxy the boxer, and Torben the Irish Wolfhound. This picture is from August. Torben is much, much bigger now, but I think it’s the only one I have of all three together.
Great Danes: Warlok, Majik, Voodoo, and, breaking the streak, Simba. There were four other danes but they were adult rescues so I didn’t get to name them. Irish Wolfhounds: Mischief and Mayhem, plus two rescues I didn’t name. Cats: Cloud, Gypsy, Harlequin, plus rescues I didn’t name. Seems like my adult rescues come from the people names convention, Great Danes Bryson and Peggy Sue, Irish Wolfhounds Gus and Lucy, Borzoi Sydney.
@awk I’m curious… Is the sequential number a reference to the unit of a particular type, or the unit’s sequence in total? (Were there 25 capybaras before? Or just 25 creatures?) How many bits are allocated to the sequence number, or how many creatures can you name before you cannot allocate one in the given space?
@djslack The number is per animal, so (Animal, Seq) is a minimal key. The downside is I can only ever have 99 of any given animal total since I wouldn’t want to re-use an identifier for a beloved childhood pet. I still get teary-eyed about Cat_02.
@SSteve Thanks, unless you mean in the zombie sense.
@awk Thanks, that makes perfect sense. Given the two digit limit I think you may hit your capybara quota. If it looks like you may need to patch things up with a Y2K style fix, I’ll have the local colleges fire up their old COBOL classes to have a workforce trained and ready to implement. Just give us a few years’ notice.
Our oldest dog is a pomeranian named Clover, so when we got our collie she had to be named Crimson. Now we have a new rescued stray, a black mouth cur puppy named Roux. She got her name from her color (and the gumbo cookoff trophies in my kitchen might have helped), but once she started barking it stuck because she calls her own name like “Roo-roo-roo”.
My father came over for Christmas and told us that we need one more and to name her Kanga. I guess we have a thing for naming our pets as potentially matching sets.
@moondrake I only do pairs. Your scheme is much more advanced, but also seems to require a greater number and variety of pets. You can achieve results on a much higher level with that kind of interplay to work with.
I’m all about words that sound cool. So if I got a pet it would be named something like Legion or Phoenix.
That said, my current pet is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel we got from a friend. His name, which we didn’t choose, is Charlie. He’s a showdog though so his kennel name is a little more special. My dog’s name is Azurmist Legacy Jedi Knight.
I got a chameleon years ago and named him Carlos Danger after Anthony Wiener’s online dating name. Some time passes. I get a dog. He’s a foxhound, so I name him Todd because of the Fox and the Hound. I call him T Dog all the time, though, because his name starts with a T and he’s a dog and also I find T Dawg from the walking dead to be hilarious. Meanwhile, Anthony Wiener gets in another sex scandal, this time sexting a 14 year old or something. Shameful. Anyway, I’m reading the news, his Kik name was “T Dog”. So, how do I name my pets? Funny you should ask…
5 cats: Max, Oscar, Charlie, Atticus (3-legged), and Sammy.
3 dogs: Lady (super prissy), Pitty (was supposed to be a temporary name until her owners were found-that was 4 years ago and now that stupid name lingers), and Edo (retired police K9 and dumber than a bag of hammers)
1 chicken: Hensley
1 rabbit: Stu (as in, Rabbit Stew) but we got lazy and called him BunBun
And everyone lives in harmony. I tell them every day they’d better get along or they’ll die. So far they oblige.
Cats are Loki and Cthulu. I helped named my girlfriend’s dog (unbeknownst to her [my girlfriend, not the dog, though I suppose the dog doesn’t know either]) June because I was really into the podcast How Did This Get Made at the time (“well, doesn’t she just look like a June?”)…(in my defense she does look like a June).
The trick is using a large enough name-set, so that when you get more pets, you won’t run out. Lately, I’ve been using William Gibson characters for pet names and Neal Stephenson characters for user names.
No, wait, that’s computers. Oh well, who hasn’t been comforted on a lonely night by warm aluminum?
@InnocuousFarmer I like your naming convention. I shall start naming pets based on Lee Child characters. The first will be, of course, Jack Reacher. Probably just “Reacher.”
We live in a semi-rural area and get a lot of feral cats and lost or left dogs. We’ve been naming the cats after states. First was Jersey, then followed Nevada, Utah, Carolina, Dakota, Michigan, Florida, Arizona, Alaska (an all white crippled male), and more. Once they settle near our house they are neutered or spayed and earn their keep by chasing off rodents. The dogs get names that suit their personalities. Right now we are sans dogs, but we make up for it with seven cats.
Pun/wordplay funny human names.
First I adopted Rocco. The rescue group called him Cowboy, but I had to give him a name myself. Remembering the fancy-schmancy long title my ex’s dad gave his standard poodle (in French, no less), I had to go anti-artsy. Remembering how the Humanities pronounced Rococo (“Ro-COE-coe”), I responded, "Don’t ya mean Rocco?"
His sister, they named Stetson, which I didn’t feel was very feminine. I named her Harriet so I could call her Hattie for short (get it? Stetson… Hattie?).
Our Golden Retrievers had normal people names Annie, Charlie, Lucy but our German Shepherds have the “manly” names Rommel & Bear. Names that match their personalities. Wanted to name Bear Worthington Lester so I could shorten it to Worthless but the wife vetoed that idea.
We tried to be semi-clever when we got our cats, we named the orange one “Nacho” and the dark gray one “Noche”. That lasted about three days.
They’ve been “Orange Cat” and “Gray Cat” ever since because no one can mix them up that way.
All the horses were rescues, so they came pre-named. Every other animal, there was some weird logic.
Right now I have Parker (<a href=“https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leverage_(TV_series)”>he’s a thief </a> and the shelter had named him Peanut Butter but that would not do. But there was Pussywillow Charlie who got named as a result of a fight (barn kitten from a neighbour, I insisted he was named Pussywillow, another kid said he’d named him Charlie and neither of us would back down), Nuisance I through III (black cats, each one), Jedi (named for his jumping ability).
There was also Cheeky the duck (because she was). She spent her formative months being raised in our house and knew where the food got kept and could be demanding. She adjusted well to outside life and fell in with a clan of wild ducks. She would lead them up to our yard (which was as close as they wanted to get), then proceed to march up to the house and bang on the door. When someone answered, she’d go straight to the food. The wild ducks never came closer, but they soon figured out what the trip was for.
TL/DR
Sometimes I know ahead of time, like I just knew I wanted a cat named Pussywillow (a grey one, of course) or whatever show or book I am obsessed with at the time (Parker was going to be named after one of the crew – his actually being a thief and escape artist just clinched it), sometimes it’s personality, and sometimes it just happens.
We decided to name male cats after US Presidents so the big orange tom is named Abraham. The females were supposed to be named after royalty from sci-fi/fantasy but when the time came nothing seemed right so we named her Sheila after Dr. Mrs. The Monarch from Venture Bros.
Once had a cat named “Dumb Dog” Another cat called “Target” She was pure white except for a round spot of grey black streaks on her side. Also, the neighbor kid shot her in the arm with his pellet gun.
One of my favorites was “Linus” He met his demise at the end of a neighbor’s trap.
Current cats are, “Sozo” She was supposed to be Zoso from Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page but the vet wrote it as Sozo on her microchip and shot records.
Other cats are Finnagin (aka Old Shep), and Baxter (aka Bubba)
I’d say whatever strikes me, though my current cat was after a character. Always been a fan of the Sleepy Hollow story, and at the time decided I had to get a black cat. So his name is Ichabod.
One name just happened because we can’t think of a name: When we got a kitten that looked like a miniature of our adult cat we kept calling her the baby, it stuck.
Some pets came with names and we kept them.
One was sarcasm: the kitten was always falling over or tripping so we named her Grace.
The orange king of the castle is Aslan, after the lion in The Chronicles of Narnia.
After managing an inner city animal shelter with an intake of 12,000 animals each year? Holidays, months, colors, tv shows, every conceivable way you can imagine to find names. Often they sort of name themselves!
My vote asserted that I’d explain in the comments, but it was a lie. My “system”, such as it is, shall remain forever unknown to the Meh forums. Take that!
TV characters (Bart, Lisa, Maggie) (Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Joey, Phoebe) (Richie Cunningham, Opie Taylor, Ron Howard)
Coloring (Rusty, Spot - a male calico, red and white cat with two spots of black)
Charlie Ahole because the woman who brought him here was Charlene and Ahole because he’s an asshole. (Which is why she brought him here, he beat up on her two cats unless he was drugged and she didn’t want him to be drugged all the time; he does get an occasional Xanax here, but only when he’s really being pushy with the other cats, he’s a kind of a bully, “made ya flinch” type of personality. There have been some pretty big fights, but he’s mellowed out a minute bit in the years we’ve had him.)
Sitting here thinking about it, there’s too many different ways to mention. But no stupid names like Fluffy or Rover.
I love when pets have normal human names, especially when they seem to match their personality.
However, I’ve never done that.
My present cats, I was lacking inspiration, weeks had passed and they were in danger of both becoming “Kitty”, so I went with descriptive - here are Smokey and Tiger on the night I took them home (they’re fat adults now):
My previous cat was Monk. He was black and kinda crazy, so I named him after my favorite crazy black cat, jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk. (jazz… “cat”, get it?)
Before that was Stinky, the cat who’s very first act upon bringing him home was to drop a bomb in his litter box that cleared the apartment for hours.
And the cat before that was Loopy, because she was.
Most entertaining pet I’ve ever had. I swear she’d do whacky, zany things just to make us laugh.
That’s 30 years of cats…
When I was a kid, we had a West Highland Terrier named “Toby”.
This was the era of the original “Roots” mini series, and when I got old enough to appreciate the irony, I’d sometimes call her, “white dog named Toby” or “Kunta Kinte”.
And before that, when I was just a toddler, we had a Dalmatian named “Speckles”.
@DennisG2014 One of the dogs we had when I was a kid was a Cocker Spaniel named Skipper because we took him boating a lot. When I was very little my dad travelled for work a lot, and he directly rescued (bought half starved right off the end of a chain and had to treat for shackle galls) a large black Great Dane mix. My dad intended on taking him to a shelter but observed that he was super protective of the family, especially the kids, and highly aggressive toward strange men so we kept him and named him Fury.
I make up the spellings or names. Or words from other languages. Examples: Neysa (made up but sounds almost like Nisa), Shida (means trouble in Swahili), Zumi (Daughter wanted “Zoomie”, I changed it to Zumi).
My kids pick “official” names for the pets, then I call them by nicknames that pop into my head. The dog was named Willow and the cat named Panda (by my daughter). But to me they are Weasel-face and Fuzzball (or just Weez and Fuzzy). They respond to either name.
Sans pets at this time. Growing up we had a Collie that could have stunt doubled for Lassie. He was Brandy, short for Brandywine, an area near us known for the Battle of Brandywine. We had a cat, Misha, which is the nickname for Mikhail Baryshnikov as my mother was a professional ballerina when she was young. More recently, a shepherd/terrier mix named Fritz (for the German shepherd side of him), a husky/shepherd/wolf mix named Kilo (already named when we rescued him), and our cat, unofficially named Chewbacca. The gf’s younger sister named him Tigger (like everyone else does) but we hated it and never called him that. We’ve talked about getting two kittens and naming them Hocus and Pocus but I think my next one is going to be named Geddy. If you know the name and you know the band, bonus points for you.
@djslack I’m aware of the movie and had always intended to see it but never got around to it. Seems kind of strange for me since it has both Rush and Star Wars in it! I’ll have to dl it and watch it.
No system names seem to happen, the only name in 30 years that had a reason was Hari because my wife found the kitten sitting on the hood of her car in the airport parking garage. No he was not handing out flowers.
The oldest of my current set of cats were re-named in about 3 seconds by my daughter. She was having an extended hissy fit that I wouldn’t change her name to something incredibly stupid and so I told her grownups name children - end of story, children can name pets. The 3 cats got renamed in a flash. Some strays I refused to name because I didn’t want to get attached to them (which irritated the vet that they didn’t have names - just kitty) because I knew if I named them I’d claim them and then keep them…
I wanted to name our first rescue cat Hyper, as in Hi purr. The first spelling fit her personality and she is a very social cat. It did not stick so she ended up with a boring name.
We named our pup Gracey after the family in the backstory of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. It’s Disney-related, but not so obvious unless you’re more or less a fan of the park/ride.
We once were fostering a dog named Grace, supposedly rescued from a dog-fighting ring. She proceeded to have 9 puppies, which our boys named in typical fashion: Patches, Horseshoe, WhiteSox, Blackie, Tiny, JJBarea (that litter had 2 runts), Giant, Flash, & Pirate. All eventually got adopted out except Blackie, who we had decided to keep.
Orange cat 1 = Cheddar (now deceased), orange cat 2 = Colby (19+yo). Had a couple semi-feral cats who sorta adopted us when the asshole neighbors moved out & left them behind: Momma Kitty and Baby Kitty
I had two cats at home until my sister moved out and took them with her. One was named Kyo, after a character that represented the zodiac cat from the manga Fruits Basket. The other we named Loki after the Norse god (and Marvel’s Avengers). So we tend to favor fictional characters most.
@ninjaemilee yes, the feels! I had watched the anime first, so when I was reading the end of the manga, it was surprising to me. I remember crying a lot.
Puns/wordplay. Like the Scottish terrier named Montgomery, a chameleon named Spot, and a chicken named Marty McFly.
@simplersimon This is my style - my cat is a polydactyl (many toes) so her name is Poly.
@simplersimon we had a cat we named Tom Petty, as in tom cat and pet the cat and TP and the Heartbreakers. We smiled at our cleverness while we knew those around us were groaning inwardly but smiled politely.
Lately, after cars. Chevy & Jetta.
My wife has a cat. I think she named it but I call it “damn cat”.
@daveinwarsh I remember growing up that my neighbor had a beagle named “Dee Dee” (damn dog)
@daveinwarsh My daughter has a dog named Chevy and we have Kia…both pups were named when we rescued them.
@DrWorm My friend’s dog was JD, just dog.
@moondrake my buddy’s grandma, had an outside cat, named “Slutty” - she was constantly knocked up…
I’m allergic to cats, dogs, hamsters, anything cute, etc… However my wife has bought me three stuffed animals; two dogs and a squirrel. In order of receiving them:
First dog - Redrum
Second dog - Slobber Knocker
Squirrel - Stu
@hems79 You’re allergic to cute things? Are you allergic to your wife then? That would be unfortunate.
@Mehsturbator Maybe he took Jimmy Soul’s advice.
@Mehsturbator Pet thread.
/giphy don’t start your shit.
Our cat is named Cat and/or “the cat”.
@trisk When I was a teenager my mom got a cat and I named it “cat”. I told her why give it a real name if it won’t come when you call it anyway? That cat and I never liked each other.
@trisk Yup. My cat is TC for Tortoiseshell Cat, or just “The Cat” - and she doesn’t seem to mind.
@trisk My sister named her cat Kitty, but only because she somehow couldn’t think of ANYTHING better and gave up. But… I named my cat Koshka, which is just Russian for “cat,” so I’m not really one to talk.
His name is Emerald because of the green wings.
[Edit] Weird how it shows the image sideways. If you right click on it and view image in a new tab, it’s correct.
@cengland0 He is living in that pic, right?
@mfladd LOL, yes. Image didn’t post right. You can right click on it and open in a new window or tab and see it vertical.
@cengland0 Phew! He is awesome.
Ha! I liked it w/o your [edit]
Love my bird so I’ll share another photo of his red/orange/yellow front.
@mfladd He has ceased to be!
'E’s just pining for the fjords…
Jennifer Juniper and Maggie Mae.
But now the kids and grandkids pick the names, so Bandit, Princess, and Snoopy.
We usually take a while and find something that seems to fit them well. Right now we have Ishmael the tuxedo cat, Roxy the boxer, and Torben the Irish Wolfhound. This picture is from August. Torben is much, much bigger now, but I think it’s the only one I have of all three together.
After various members of the large and expended Spencer and Churchill families. I won’t be running out of names in the next hundred years.
Dogs are Daisy and Delilah. Cat is “black cat” and the shelter named our other cat Pia.
Wait, pets have names?
I wait until they tell me their name. Who am I to choose their name?
I don’t name them, they tell me their names. This is Dusty, Pixie and Tommy.
@freakaluscious Nice composition.
@freakaluscious
Great Danes: Warlok, Majik, Voodoo, and, breaking the streak, Simba. There were four other danes but they were adult rescues so I didn’t get to name them. Irish Wolfhounds: Mischief and Mayhem, plus two rescues I didn’t name. Cats: Cloud, Gypsy, Harlequin, plus rescues I didn’t name. Seems like my adult rescues come from the people names convention, Great Danes Bryson and Peggy Sue, Irish Wolfhounds Gus and Lucy, Borzoi Sydney.
I name them after the type of animal they are, followed by a sequential decimal number, for example “Cat_01” or “Capybara_26”.
@awk I love your brain.
@SSteve
Awk01?
@awk I’m curious… Is the sequential number a reference to the unit of a particular type, or the unit’s sequence in total? (Were there 25 capybaras before? Or just 25 creatures?) How many bits are allocated to the sequence number, or how many creatures can you name before you cannot allocate one in the given space?
@djslack The number is per animal, so (Animal, Seq) is a minimal key. The downside is I can only ever have 99 of any given animal total since I wouldn’t want to re-use an identifier for a beloved childhood pet. I still get teary-eyed about Cat_02.
@SSteve Thanks, unless you mean in the zombie sense.
@awk Thanks, that makes perfect sense. Given the two digit limit I think you may hit your capybara quota. If it looks like you may need to patch things up with a Y2K style fix, I’ll have the local colleges fire up their old COBOL classes to have a workforce trained and ready to implement. Just give us a few years’ notice.
Our oldest dog is a pomeranian named Clover, so when we got our collie she had to be named Crimson. Now we have a new rescued stray, a black mouth cur puppy named Roux. She got her name from her color (and the gumbo cookoff trophies in my kitchen might have helped), but once she started barking it stuck because she calls her own name like “Roo-roo-roo”.
My father came over for Christmas and told us that we need one more and to name her Kanga. I guess we have a thing for naming our pets as potentially matching sets.
@djslack I had a cat named Harlequin and a topaz colored cat when I adopted a harlequin Great Dane named Topaz. Does that count?
@moondrake I only do pairs. Your scheme is much more advanced, but also seems to require a greater number and variety of pets. You can achieve results on a much higher level with that kind of interplay to work with.
Yes, I believe it counts.
@moondrake Freaky!
I’m all about words that sound cool. So if I got a pet it would be named something like Legion or Phoenix.
That said, my current pet is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel we got from a friend. His name, which we didn’t choose, is Charlie. He’s a showdog though so his kennel name is a little more special. My dog’s name is Azurmist Legacy Jedi Knight.
Based on mythology. Zeus - Rottie. Odin - Rott/Lab mix. Rhea - Hedgehog.
@HutcH Same here - Current dogs are Vesta and Ceres; previously we had Thor, Artemis, and Apollo.
@HutcH 2 cats here: Odin and Loki
Classical composer first or middle names are the best names for pets (including goldfish):
I got a chameleon years ago and named him Carlos Danger after Anthony Wiener’s online dating name. Some time passes. I get a dog. He’s a foxhound, so I name him Todd because of the Fox and the Hound. I call him T Dog all the time, though, because his name starts with a T and he’s a dog and also I find T Dawg from the walking dead to be hilarious. Meanwhile, Anthony Wiener gets in another sex scandal, this time sexting a 14 year old or something. Shameful. Anyway, I’m reading the news, his Kik name was “T Dog”. So, how do I name my pets? Funny you should ask…
5 cats: Max, Oscar, Charlie, Atticus (3-legged), and Sammy.
3 dogs: Lady (super prissy), Pitty (was supposed to be a temporary name until her owners were found-that was 4 years ago and now that stupid name lingers), and Edo (retired police K9 and dumber than a bag of hammers)
1 chicken: Hensley
1 rabbit: Stu (as in, Rabbit Stew) but we got lazy and called him BunBun
And everyone lives in harmony. I tell them every day they’d better get along or they’ll die. So far they oblige.
Cats name is bowser. Dogs name is kitty
Cats are Loki and Cthulu. I helped named my girlfriend’s dog (unbeknownst to her [my girlfriend, not the dog, though I suppose the dog doesn’t know either]) June because I was really into the podcast How Did This Get Made at the time (“well, doesn’t she just look like a June?”)…(in my defense she does look like a June).
The trick is using a large enough name-set, so that when you get more pets, you won’t run out. Lately, I’ve been using William Gibson characters for pet names and Neal Stephenson characters for user names.
No, wait, that’s computers. Oh well, who hasn’t been comforted on a lonely night by warm aluminum?
@InnocuousFarmer I like your naming convention. I shall start naming pets based on Lee Child characters. The first will be, of course, Jack Reacher. Probably just “Reacher.”
We live in a semi-rural area and get a lot of feral cats and lost or left dogs. We’ve been naming the cats after states. First was Jersey, then followed Nevada, Utah, Carolina, Dakota, Michigan, Florida, Arizona, Alaska (an all white crippled male), and more. Once they settle near our house they are neutered or spayed and earn their keep by chasing off rodents. The dogs get names that suit their personalities. Right now we are sans dogs, but we make up for it with seven cats.
Pun/wordplay funny human names.
First I adopted Rocco. The rescue group called him Cowboy, but I had to give him a name myself. Remembering the fancy-schmancy long title my ex’s dad gave his standard poodle (in French, no less), I had to go anti-artsy. Remembering how the Humanities pronounced Rococo (“Ro-COE-coe”), I responded, "Don’t ya mean Rocco?"
His sister, they named Stetson, which I didn’t feel was very feminine. I named her Harriet so I could call her Hattie for short (get it? Stetson… Hattie?).
Got a shiba inu puppy and we named her Chestnut because of her coat. Shortened it up and Chessie stuck.
Our Golden Retrievers had normal people names Annie, Charlie, Lucy but our German Shepherds have the “manly” names Rommel & Bear. Names that match their personalities. Wanted to name Bear Worthington Lester so I could shorten it to Worthless but the wife vetoed that idea.
We tried to be semi-clever when we got our cats, we named the orange one “Nacho” and the dark gray one “Noche”. That lasted about three days.
They’ve been “Orange Cat” and “Gray Cat” ever since because no one can mix them up that way.
All the horses were rescues, so they came pre-named. Every other animal, there was some weird logic.
Right now I have Parker (<a href=“https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leverage_(TV_series)”>he’s a thief </a> and the shelter had named him Peanut Butter but that would not do. But there was Pussywillow Charlie who got named as a result of a fight (barn kitten from a neighbour, I insisted he was named Pussywillow, another kid said he’d named him Charlie and neither of us would back down), Nuisance I through III (black cats, each one), Jedi (named for his jumping ability).
There was also Cheeky the duck (because she was). She spent her formative months being raised in our house and knew where the food got kept and could be demanding. She adjusted well to outside life and fell in with a clan of wild ducks. She would lead them up to our yard (which was as close as they wanted to get), then proceed to march up to the house and bang on the door. When someone answered, she’d go straight to the food. The wild ducks never came closer, but they soon figured out what the trip was for.
TL/DR
Sometimes I know ahead of time, like I just knew I wanted a cat named Pussywillow (a grey one, of course) or whatever show or book I am obsessed with at the time (Parker was going to be named after one of the crew – his actually being a thief and escape artist just clinched it), sometimes it’s personality, and sometimes it just happens.
I had a cat that was named “Nellie” when I got her, but I renamed her “Guinness” because she was black and extra stout.
We have a dog named Bellatrix (also called Killer B ) and cats named Salem (also called sail cat) and Hennessy (also called awkward cat).
We decided to name male cats after US Presidents so the big orange tom is named Abraham. The females were supposed to be named after royalty from sci-fi/fantasy but when the time came nothing seemed right so we named her Sheila after Dr. Mrs. The Monarch from Venture Bros.
Once had a cat named “Dumb Dog” Another cat called “Target” She was pure white except for a round spot of grey black streaks on her side. Also, the neighbor kid shot her in the arm with his pellet gun.
One of my favorites was “Linus” He met his demise at the end of a neighbor’s trap.
Current cats are, “Sozo” She was supposed to be Zoso from Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page but the vet wrote it as Sozo on her microchip and shot records.
Other cats are Finnagin (aka Old Shep), and Baxter (aka Bubba)
I’d say whatever strikes me, though my current cat was after a character. Always been a fan of the Sleepy Hollow story, and at the time decided I had to get a black cat. So his name is Ichabod.
We travel too much. No pets. Our grown kids have their dogs.
One name just happened because we can’t think of a name: When we got a kitten that looked like a miniature of our adult cat we kept calling her the baby, it stuck.
Some pets came with names and we kept them.
One was sarcasm: the kitten was always falling over or tripping so we named her Grace.
The orange king of the castle is Aslan, after the lion in The Chronicles of Narnia.
We named our first two cats after two of the dolphins that used to perform at Cedar Point in the 80s and 90s - Coco and Breeze.
After southern foods
I always say I’m going to give my next animal an interesting name that perfectly suits them. Then I get said animal and that just doesn’t happen.
For cats I currently have Stinky, Lila, Cora, and Sampson.
For dogs I currently have Wilbur, Lacey and Tucker.
But we pretty much only call them all by their nicknames: Tink, Li Li, Poof, Sam, Willy, Fish and Duck. Yeah, we’re horrible at naming.
After managing an inner city animal shelter with an intake of 12,000 animals each year? Holidays, months, colors, tv shows, every conceivable way you can imagine to find names. Often they sort of name themselves!
My vote asserted that I’d explain in the comments, but it was a lie. My “system”, such as it is, shall remain forever unknown to the Meh forums. Take that!
TV characters (Bart, Lisa, Maggie) (Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Joey, Phoebe) (Richie Cunningham, Opie Taylor, Ron Howard)
Coloring (Rusty, Spot - a male calico, red and white cat with two spots of black)
Charlie Ahole because the woman who brought him here was Charlene and Ahole because he’s an asshole. (Which is why she brought him here, he beat up on her two cats unless he was drugged and she didn’t want him to be drugged all the time; he does get an occasional Xanax here, but only when he’s really being pushy with the other cats, he’s a kind of a bully, “made ya flinch” type of personality. There have been some pretty big fights, but he’s mellowed out a minute bit in the years we’ve had him.)
Sitting here thinking about it, there’s too many different ways to mention. But no stupid names like Fluffy or Rover.
I love when pets have normal human names, especially when they seem to match their personality.
However, I’ve never done that.
My present cats, I was lacking inspiration, weeks had passed and they were in danger of both becoming “Kitty”, so I went with descriptive - here are Smokey and Tiger on the night I took them home (they’re fat adults now):
My previous cat was Monk. He was black and kinda crazy, so I named him after my favorite crazy black cat, jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk. (jazz… “cat”, get it?)
Before that was Stinky, the cat who’s very first act upon bringing him home was to drop a bomb in his litter box that cleared the apartment for hours.
And the cat before that was Loopy, because she was.
Most entertaining pet I’ve ever had. I swear she’d do whacky, zany things just to make us laugh.
That’s 30 years of cats…
When I was a kid, we had a West Highland Terrier named “Toby”.
This was the era of the original “Roots” mini series, and when I got old enough to appreciate the irony, I’d sometimes call her, “white dog named Toby” or “Kunta Kinte”.
And before that, when I was just a toddler, we had a Dalmatian named “Speckles”.
@DennisG2014 One of the dogs we had when I was a kid was a Cocker Spaniel named Skipper because we took him boating a lot. When I was very little my dad travelled for work a lot, and he directly rescued (bought half starved right off the end of a chain and had to treat for shackle galls) a large black Great Dane mix. My dad intended on taking him to a shelter but observed that he was super protective of the family, especially the kids, and highly aggressive toward strange men so we kept him and named him Fury.
@moondrake don’t ask how but my old blurry eyes read Fury as Fluffy and I giggled.
I make up the spellings or names. Or words from other languages. Examples: Neysa (made up but sounds almost like Nisa), Shida (means trouble in Swahili), Zumi (Daughter wanted “Zoomie”, I changed it to Zumi).
My kids pick “official” names for the pets, then I call them by nicknames that pop into my head. The dog was named Willow and the cat named Panda (by my daughter). But to me they are Weasel-face and Fuzzball (or just Weez and Fuzzy). They respond to either name.
Sans pets at this time. Growing up we had a Collie that could have stunt doubled for Lassie. He was Brandy, short for Brandywine, an area near us known for the Battle of Brandywine. We had a cat, Misha, which is the nickname for Mikhail Baryshnikov as my mother was a professional ballerina when she was young. More recently, a shepherd/terrier mix named Fritz (for the German shepherd side of him), a husky/shepherd/wolf mix named Kilo (already named when we rescued him), and our cat, unofficially named Chewbacca. The gf’s younger sister named him Tigger (like everyone else does) but we hated it and never called him that. We’ve talked about getting two kittens and naming them Hocus and Pocus but I think my next one is going to be named Geddy. If you know the name and you know the band, bonus points for you.
@cinoclav Ever want a little variety?
@djslack Yes, but the gf says I’m only allowed to date her.
@cinoclav Lol!
I was perhaps a little obscure with my reference to a movie which is also possibly obscure.
@djslack I’m aware of the movie and had always intended to see it but never got around to it. Seems kind of strange for me since it has both Rush and Star Wars in it! I’ll have to dl it and watch it.
My (late) doggie Bella came with her name when I adopted her.
It’s incidental that Bella also manufactures/supplies shirts for the imprint industry.
My current pets that I chose names for are outer space themed.
i name my pets for goddesses/gods. Other family members don’t choose the same system.
This poll sounds like a great way to fish for brute force password hacking ideas…
@mehdaf
Or not.
@f00l well according to mr. robot it is…
But alas, I base all my technical understanding off USA network programming…
No system names seem to happen, the only name in 30 years that had a reason was Hari because my wife found the kitten sitting on the hood of her car in the airport parking garage. No he was not handing out flowers.
The oldest of my current set of cats were re-named in about 3 seconds by my daughter. She was having an extended hissy fit that I wouldn’t change her name to something incredibly stupid and so I told her grownups name children - end of story, children can name pets. The 3 cats got renamed in a flash. Some strays I refused to name because I didn’t want to get attached to them (which irritated the vet that they didn’t have names - just kitty) because I knew if I named them I’d claim them and then keep them…
Son’s cat - Ari Gato
Granddaughter’s fish - My Sweet Darling.
I wanted to name our first rescue cat Hyper, as in Hi purr. The first spelling fit her personality and she is a very social cat. It did not stick so she ended up with a boring name.
We named our pup Gracey after the family in the backstory of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. It’s Disney-related, but not so obvious unless you’re more or less a fan of the park/ride.
@SpenceMan01 Awesome Frenchie.
Our cat is named Fitzroy Gigglebottom (aka: Fitz). Our dog is Maximilian Von Snausage (aka: Max). No wonder they are a couple of goofballs.
A friend of mine has a niece who named her betta Purple Eyelash, which is the best name for a fish EVER. It wasn’t even a purple betta! It was blue!
We once were fostering a dog named Grace, supposedly rescued from a dog-fighting ring. She proceeded to have 9 puppies, which our boys named in typical fashion: Patches, Horseshoe, WhiteSox, Blackie, Tiny, JJBarea (that litter had 2 runts), Giant, Flash, & Pirate. All eventually got adopted out except Blackie, who we had decided to keep.
Orange cat 1 = Cheddar (now deceased), orange cat 2 = Colby (19+yo). Had a couple semi-feral cats who sorta adopted us when the asshole neighbors moved out & left them behind: Momma Kitty and Baby Kitty
Mine was named Dumbledore because of his crazy gray facial hair and ability to disappear. But now he’s just called Dumdum, Dummy, or Idiot.
The other is my honey’s cat, Paublo aka Furball.
I had two cats at home until my sister moved out and took them with her. One was named Kyo, after a character that represented the zodiac cat from the manga Fruits Basket. The other we named Loki after the Norse god (and Marvel’s Avengers). So we tend to favor fictional characters most.
@ninjaemilee aww, I loved Fruits Basket.
/image kyo cat fruits basket
@RiotDemon This is an old picture, but this was Kyo.
He was my favorite character in the Fruits Basket series. So many feels in that manga…
@ninjaemilee yes, the feels! I had watched the anime first, so when I was reading the end of the manga, it was surprising to me. I remember crying a lot.
I want to read it again now.
Vaginas.
@MWGuntrader cool. Cool cool cool.