How did your dog get it's name?!?

Rose already came with her name.  She was born one July 21, 2003....not long before Johnny Cash died.  Her full name is Rocky Point Wildwood Flower, but her owners at the time couldn't bring themselves to call her Flower, so Rose it was.  Her brother's name is Rocky Point Ring of Fire.  Johnny Cash puppies!  Colton didn't have a name other than Dude for a while because I couldn't find anything that fit him.  I was trying to come up with a music related name since I'm hoping to work in the music industry and Rose is music related.  I thought about Satchmo as in Louis Armstrong, but it didn't quite work.  Finally, I asked the breeder I work with (who technically owns Colton) if he had an suggesstions and he said at his son's baseball game, one of the boys was named Colton and he thought it was a nice name.  He's very into simple names.  I thought it fit him quite well because he is more like a human than a dog!  So, Colton it is!

Shadow already had his name when we got him. But my my own name for him, in addition, is Pretty Boy, because he is.
 

Talus:  last of the bronze gods who used to circle around the island of Crete throwing stones at oncoming ships to protect the island from invasion.....
he's my little bronze protector.....

My BF wanted a jokey celebrity name... I don't know why, he just thought it would be funny. We settled on Russell Jones (real name of ODB from Wu Tang Clan) - because it also stands alone as a name w/out the pop reference. Weirdly enough since we got him I have heard of a cat and another dog named Russell by friends of friends.

When we adopted Copper he came with the name George.  (His foster parents were into Grey's Anatomy & named all the puppies a character's name.)  Neither my DH or I liked that name, it just didn't fit him.  Since we already had 2 cats & their names started with A & B, we thought his name had to start with C.  Well, we kept suggesting names and none fit, but when we finally came to Copper it was a name we both liked (it also helps that my DH really LOVES the Fox & the Hound).  So Copper is what we ended up with.  Some days I wonder if we should have named him Goofy though.....he's such a goofy puppy! []

it's pretty simply in my family, well my husbands, golf is a major part of our lives. So we get a dog, and simply name him after a golf company, "Callaway".
My best friend.....other than my hubby.

I was just looking through tons of names, trying to find ones I liked, and once I found Maya, I just stopped looking.  I really liked the name, and it seems to fit her (just got her yesterday, but I've had the name picked out for a while, since I started looking at her, and deciding if she was right for me)

Before I got Maisie it was between Maisie, Opal, and Munchkin(lol)

I chose the name Maisie because it sounds playful and it means pearl in scottish.

Dancer - her first owner was a polio victim, and said that if she couldn't dance, then the dog could do it for her.  I thought that was nice, so I kept the name.
Sioux - named at the shelter.  I kept it because the ACO and I are best friends and both have native background - I thought it was an omen that I should have this dog)
Fergie - named by my BF's mom (at the Bridge with her other dogs)
Maska - was kind of a "weenie" when we got him - it's a native word that means "strong" - we thought he'd grow into it (and he did).
Sequoyah - named for a Cherokee chief who helped develop the alphabet (she's so smart, she can almost read & write LOL)

Maggie - I got her at six weeks old and within hours she was housetrained and knew sit, lie down, and we were working on stay.  I was a little frightened to be honest - I'd been hoping I'd just have her responding to her name by the first day and I still didn't have a name for her!  On the same trip that we ended up with Maggie (an impulse free puppy at the flea market), we had bought a new TV.  On the box it said "Magnavox - smart  . . .very smart!"  Maggie also did a lot of weird yelping and talking and magna vox basically means big voice in Latin, my major in college.  So I named her Magnavox and shortened it almost immediately to Maggie. 

None of my other dogs have very interesting names.  I name my livestock guardian dogs after Tolkien characters, usually from the Silmarillion.  The Border collies mostly have people names that are traditional.  Ben, Jen, Ann, Rocky, and now Ted.  I think maybe the old shepherds didn't have much of a social life and it sounded better to say, "Aye, I spent all week wi' ma mate Tom . . ." []

My trainer named Doug - Doug was originally named Dooley, poor guy.  My trainer wanted to re-name him but for some reason he thought Dudley might be an improvement.  I begged him not to do it and suggested Doug instead.  Thank goodness he did, since we ended up purchasing Doug a few months later.  []

When we bought Doug, we realized that my parents' landlord (also a good friend of the family) was named Doug too.   We went through about two days of saying "I think Doug" - and being interrupted with, "Which Doug?"  So Doug became Doug the Dog.  And we also had Doug the Landlord.  A couple months ago, Doug the Landlord sold the house he was renting to my parents, so we don't really have to say Doug the Dog anymore.  But it's kind of stuck now.

Cord is named after a famous American dog that I think is also an ancestor of his - I don't know where his name came from, however.

Zhi has a Chinese name which means lotus princess.  As it turns out, an African name would have been more in line with the breed's actual origins, but oh well.  Next time (many years from now), I'll get my name on a top breeder's list and the name will probably be guided by the litter theme and kennel name, etc.

Indy was named by his breeder- and it just FIT, so we kept it. (His sire was named Harrison, and his brothers- all boy litter- all had puppy names after various Harrison Ford roles.)

Wings had a white patch on her shoulder (whitefactored sable collie), although I honestly didn't notice it until after I named her- it was just the word that wanted to come out of my mouth when I tried to think of something to call her. I had a lot of people think it was something deep about service dogs and freedom- but it really wasn't. It was just what she wanted to be called.

My son named our lab Mocha. He took one look at her light brown coat and figured it fit her to a tee. He reallly has a nack for picking out names to fit our dogs personalities.

when we adopted him he was named 'boscoe' by the spca - he didn't know his name though he'd only been there a week. I didn't think he looked like a boscoe so we debated his name for a couple of days.  Then I had him out on our deck and he scratched his butt and I said what do you have bugs or something?  He came running to me and I decided his name should be Bugs (I'm a lifelong fan of Bugs Bunny)
We call him Bugsy and it fits him although we thought of it too late his real name should be Kramer (as from Seinfeld)
Everyone that knows him agrees with the above there is something very Kramer-like to my buddy

We knew we were going to get Shane right after he was born as he was from a litter DH's aunt's dog had, and we had three months to think of a name before we got to take him home.  We kept going over to her house to play with him and see his personality and we really couldn't think of anything.  Then one day a few weeks before we brought him home DH just thought of the name Shane off the top of his head, and I liked it, so next time we saw him we started using the name and he responded.  I think he got the name because a few night before he said it we'd seen the movie The Pacifier where Vin Diesel's character is named Shane.
So when we got Miya, she was previously named Saveia.  At first we thought of keeping the name, but we either couldn't remember it or kept pronouncing it wrong and thought it was too complicated.  So we spent a few days calling out names and seeing if she responded.  Around that time we saw the movie Eight Below, the one with the huskies, and the only female, the leader of the pack, her name was Miya and since ours is half Husky (mixed with GSD), we figured we would keep with the movie character names, and it suited her.

Joey , my chinese crested had a "pony" cut when I got him, so it looked like he had a mullet. So it would only be appropriate to name him Joey after Joe Dirt