Pet names - rationale for naming your favorite pet

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Tommy999

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This is a thread designed to celebrate our pets (dog,cat, whatever). Just curious why you named your pet(s) the name you gave them, especially if the name is not typical.

For example, my wife and I have had several dogs over our 38 years of marriage. Some of their names include:

Trevor — named after a soccer player Trevor Francis. Always liked that name for a son but my wife didn’t like the name for a human, so it was our first dog’s name.

Hadrian - named after the emperor - always thought the name was cool.

Joey - he just looked like a Joey

Holley - got her in Christmas season

Sophie - our favorite girl baby name we never got to use — we only had boys.

Petey - named after the character from ‘Remember the Titans’ movie (“You’re killing me, Petey!”).
 
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I had a neighbor, an old lady who had a beautiful cat she called Abby. I always called her Sassy, because she looked just like sassy the cat in “Homeward Bound”.

The neighbor lady passed away, and her daughter abandoned that beautiful animal I took her in, and called her Abby in honor of the neighbor.

We has a pair of litter mate kitties we named Spinner and Popcorn, as the male liked to twirl around, and the female liked to jump up (hop) sometimes.

Had a neighbor who named their cat “Oreo” because the cat was black on both ends, with a white middle.

One friend of mine, when I was working for a Japanese company, named their cat “nekko” (Japanese for cat)
 
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My mother had a breed of purebred chickens for quite a few years…she would buy a new rooster from another breeder every now and then,and each rooster was named Kevin 🤔
 
My latest dog, Monty, was named on the way home from a rescue in the city of Clairmont, where we found him.
 
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I had a hamster with the totally unoriginal name Speedy. She lived up to that name, though. She was a massive (by hamster standards) ball of endless energy. We had another hamster at the time named Goldie. My brother named her that because she had golden-brown fur.

My current cat’s name is Melinda. She’s named after Melinda Gates, because I’m a nerd who used to work for Microsoft. (OK, not really. That was the name she had at the shelter, and I just went with it.)
 
I named my little baby girl “Trinity”. She was a black miniature poodle. She was my little girl and was with me during many trying times. She helped me get through a lot. She died here at home with me at the age of 11, five months ago. I consider that a Blessing as I did not want her to have to pass away in a sterile room with strangers all around. I still miss her dreadfully. I once had a receptionist at the vet ask me if I named her after Trinity from the movie Matrix. I said, “No ma’m, I’m Catholic and named her in reference to the Holy Trinity.” The receptionist had an odd look on her face and simply said, “Oh. I thought it was from the movie.”
It was kewl though. Every time I called her name it instantly put me in mind of the Holy Trinity. That was kinda the idea anyway. She was indeed a blessing to me.

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This is such a sweet photo of your little dog! 😊 ❤️

Our old kitty Pepper just passed away.

She was 20.6 years old, and would have been 21 this year. ❤️

We had adopted her, and she was already named.

We think that she was named for the coloring and the markings in her fur.

She was a brown tabby cat with black stripes and spots.

She had beautiful fur and markings. She also had red brindle colors in her fur too, along with shades of tan and white in her fur.

She almost looked like a Calico kitty due to her colors and markings, but was still a tabby due to her stripes and spots. 🙂
 
Many of my pets came to me already with a name and if it seemed to fit, I kept it.
If it doesn’t fit, I change it to something that fits with them.

I named one cat Birdie because she has a chirpy meow.
I named another cat Senator Ted because he was large and handsome and adopted from a shelter within site of the US Capitol. When he meowed a lot, my husband would say, “Senator Ted, stop filibustering.”
A kitten I adopted had been named Pebbles by the shelter who thought it was a girl. The kitten turned out to be a boy and I called it “Bam Bam” for a while, but didn’t really fit, so I changed it to Jack the Ripper after its habit of ripping open any plastic bag it could find. Jack is a really good name for him. If he were human he would wear a backwards ball cap and be a total bro.

I had a cat a few years ago who was named Madeleine by her previous owner. I had to change it as I had already had a cat named Madeleine for some years, who had recently died, so I named her Georgy Girl because the county shelter she came from had George in the name. Another cat I adopted from Virginia was black and named Jinx which I thought was an awful name for a sweet black cat, so I renamed her Ginny as it fit with Virginia and sounded kind of like her old name.
 
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Those are great names! Certainly not your typical names for sure. I like the creative names of pets. Not to slam the more common names. Senator Ted and Jack the Ripper are my 2 favs. Made me chuckle and brought a smile to my face. lol 😃
 
We’ve also had cats named Kitty, Kitty II, Fluffy (also had a puppy named Fluffy as a child), Tux, and Tabbitha, so we have had our share of boring pet names too 🙂

When my dad was a boy he had a pug named Punjab out of the “Little Orphan Annie” comic. I would love to one day have a pug myself and maybe name it Punjab.

Dad apparently really enjoyed the comics page as a young person, since when I was a young child his nickname for me was “Skeezix” which I learned much later came from “Gasoline Alley” comic. It didn’t run in our local paper so I didn’t know for years.
 
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My dog was named Cruiser. Most people think it’s because he liked to cruise around the yard. But we named him Cruiser because we love to go on cruises. 🛳️

My daughter in law has a cat named Morgan, but they insist his full name is “The academy award winning actor Morgan Freeman.”
 
Somehow I don’t pictures you as a Skeezix. My younger sister and I got called the Katzenjammer kids, so I can sympathize.

I threatened to rename our 75 pound Boxer as “Speedbump” but my sis was having none of that.
 
I reckon when I was a baby I looked close enough to the comic strip baby 🙂

Actually my dad probably looked more like Skeezix throughout his life. They were also approximately the same age (Skeezix was 2 years older), so this has got me wondering if maybe my dad’s dad or brother called him Skeezix as a little boy, and he just remembered and re-used it on his own child. Unfortunately he and his whole family have been dead for many decades so there’s nobody I can ask.

Sorry to derail the thread off the pet names…I guess this is a different kind of “pet name”
 
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First first dog as an adult was a Dalmatian named Samson because he was a strong little guy (Sam for short)
Next was a Golden Retriever that my daughter wanted to name Buddy (after the movies about Air Bud).
My current friend is a Great Dane named Jack (Black Jack in fact). He was Jeremy while at the pound, but it just didn’t suit him so we changed it.
 
We have 2 Basset Hounds…Benson…3 years old…I just like the name…and Maggie Mae…she is 6…we got her as a playmate for Benny…the person who had her couldn’t keep her for health reasons…she keeps Benny in line…lol
 
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread. I’ve really enjoyed reading all the fun names given to our pets and the reasons for naming them.
 
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I have a female cat that I named Maronita! I got her around the same time I stopped attending Mass in the Latin Rite church and started attending Mass in the Maronite church. I therefore decided to name my cat after St. Maron!
 
sancte_trinitatis said:
Senator Ted and Jack the Ripper are my 2 favs. Made me chuckle and brought a smile to my face. lol 😃
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At the shelter I got my cat, there was a kitten named Luke Skywhisker. The volunteers had varying comfort levels of calling him that.
 
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