What's in a Name?

I should add that I'd love to have a big white female dog and name her Hero after the Shakespearean character.  Of course most people don't think of Hero as a name or a female.

While my dogs have human names they are considered to be surnames, for the most part.

Monroe Magee - named after the street we lived on at the time because it didn't end in y or ie and it sounded noble enough for a big chocy lab. Magee because my maternal grandmother bred Irish Setters and that was her maiden name and included in all her puppy's names.

Van Morrison Ulrich - named after the singer that came on the radio and calmed him during his first car ride, the one to his new home. It also sounded German, like his breed, and it was fun.  Ulrich is for DH's grandmother's maiden name (also German) and patterned after Monroe's naming.  We dropped the Ulrich after DH's sister had a hissy fit because that is also her middle name.  She hasn't really spoken to us since.

My cat is named Mocarra which means "My Friend" in Irish and my mum named him.  The theme became all M's by the time we got Morrison.

I don't have strong feelings either way, but I do like a name with some sort of meaning. My sister has 6 cats, and for her, it's ONLY people names.

Sneaker was our first GSD's puppy nickname, and we liked it so we kept it. She was always sneaking into something she wasn't supposed to be doing, like getting on the couch. She was from a litter of 10, and they had nicknames for all the pups based on their personalities. Cassidy was named for the Grateful Dead song, wait for it........'Cassidy'. I picked out the name long before we had her, many of our Deadhead friends had used all the other good song names for their pets, so our next dog was going to be called Cassidy!

Next were the kitties, Elvis is named Crazy 'Bout Elvis from a line in the Tom Petty song Freefallin', and Emmy is Emmylou Coon, named for the lovely and talented Emmylou Harris, to continue the music theme.

Dena was from the 'D' litter so we needed a registered name starting with D, but could have called her anything we wanted. We ended up with a short list of 5 or 6 names that we liked (Dena was my favorite, yay!), and my hubby put up a poll on a Howard Stern BB he used to be on all the time, and it won. I would have lobbied for it anyway since it means 'valley' or 'from the valley', according to a few name websites. She's from the Willamette Valley in Oregon.

Keefer was picked out long before we got him too, it was our 'if we ever get a male dog someday' name. He's from the 'L' litter, so his registered name is Lakota, but we never intended to use that. Keefer is the last name of some of my hubby's relatives - great people who have a dairy farm that his mom shipped him off to help at during the summer starting when he was 12 years old. They had a dog named for his last name, so we're just returning the favor. He wasn't so sure, but I thought it was a really cool name for a dog, and not too common.

Hmm I like all names too! Whatever fits the dog, ya know?

I am HORRIBLE at picking out names! It's like I draw a blank and can never think of anything I like... though someday I will have a male Bull Terrier named Tank. I couldn't even pick out my kids names! DH named both of them.

Butter~ Right after I got her I left her at home with DH and she snatched 3/4 of a pound of butter off the counter and ate the whole thing! (Needless to say DH got his butt chewed out for that one LOL) That and she answered to it right away...

Roxy~ I was getting ready to go to the lake and take Roxy on the boat for the first time and I didn't want to take a nameless pup. I was putting on my swimsuit and noticed the brand name was written on the bikini top... R-O on the right boob and X-Y on the left boob LOL I did get some weird looks though... walking around with my dogs name plastered across my chest. LOL

Holly~ We got her at the end of November. DH had taught my 3 year old to sing "Deck The Halls" and she sang it ALL. THE. TIME. Pretty soon the dog started to *** her head everytime she heard the word Holly...

I got the name Shailer out of my uncle's head. When my uncle gave him to me we were picking names left and right until we came with "Sailor". My uncle doesn't know english and when I ask him how it was spelled he spelled it "S-h-a-i-l-e-r" so I kept the name. I don't know how the heck you say Shailer's name but I pronounce it like sailor. I don't have anything against naming a dog a human name the only thing is that I don't like human names. Next animal I get will be named Sowilu.

Onix was just the name I choose for her when she was a puppy but I don't know if the new "owner" kept that name. She just looked like an Onix to me.

Edit: I did a quick search and found out that a guy's (& other ppl) name is Shailer???

Huh... I've been pronouncing it "Shay-lre." 

aDorkable

Huh... I've been pronouncing it "Shay-lre." 

I think I should have stuck with the "Sailor" everybody when I spell out his name say it different.

I don't really care what you name a dog. I don't really like people names - with my luck I'd meet someone I couldn't stand and they'd have my dog's name, so usually my dogs aren't named 'people' names. Right now we just have Lucky and Roto.

Lucky was the only one out of six pupies to survive - so he was the lucky one. The smallest in the litter too.

Roto is short for Roto Rooter - he likes to root around with his nose - a lot. We didn't name him Roto, that was his previous owner's idea.

We have always chosen names based on character and they have been a mix of "human" names and other things.

 M'ow M'ow-rip= that is all this cat did, talked all day and all night. My niece christened him at about 3 years of age with this tag, but she called him the T*tty T*tty mowmow, we dropped the first 2 words................

Babe-rip= My mother has MS and has trouble remembering names under pressure, so with a toddler in the house and the word baby going on all day, we settled on this to help my mother.

Smokey Joe-Grey blue russion cross, it was his name when I adopted him. It fit so we kept it.

Whiskeyjack- Named after a character in a book I was reading at the time. Should have named him hungry jack.

Patches McGhee- Fit at the time, patches of colors everywhere, now he is a silver and white mackeral tabby....oh well.

Kord- Have no clue what his kennel name was, I believe he was from a "V" litter, will choose something later if I have to. Kord is named after a champion GSD I had as a child, in german I believe it means "honest advisor". Frankly he has advised me that I need to step it up to keep up!

Haha, I loved your post agilebasenjis!  I only knew your dogs by their nicknames.

I do have some future names picked out.  I want a Belgian Malinois called Tango, a black cat called Tuesday, an orange cat called Carrot Stick, and for future  German Shepherds I like very typical German Shepherd names: Ansel, Gretel, Karly (male), Ali (male), Sergeant (named after the German Shepherd that made me fall in love with the breed), Ajax, Ava, Falk, Ferro, Saskia, Fenga, Greif, Wupp.....

I dunno, I like some uncommon names for people/babies too. 

Well Pomeranian <3, I think that's a cute reason to name your dog Kayla!  That's actually a very sweet story.  I guess I have a human name for both my dogs.  1) Tabitha, I named her that because her mother's name was Samantha (who was my sister's dog) and from watching BeWitched, I thought of Tabitha...clever don't ya think?  LOL  2) I did a lot of research for Misty, had no idea what to name her.  Should have named her Shadow, since that's what she is...but we like boating, camping, outdoors, and Misty meant mist or dew, and thought that was a great name for a boating dog.  Just last month I found out that my SIL's husband's daughter, or niece's name is Misty.  I did get it from a baby's name website, but never heard a child named Misty.  Besides, there's just so many "dog" names out there, I don't want a name that all the other dogs in the neighborhood have.  I like to be different!  LOL

mrstjohnson

I like human names, we named our beagle Charlie because of the movie "All Dogs Go To Heaven".  Ever since I saw that movie when I was a little girl I just loved that name and knew if I ever had a dog, I would name him Charlie.

Boy you're young if you saw that movie when you were a little girl, LOL I remember buying it for my kids!  LOL

Sorry, one more post.  I always wanted to have a dog and name it Dog, and a cat, and name it...yes, you guessed it...Cat!  I know goofy, but that's me!  LOL

Its not as bad as the dog my uncle knew (in Mexico) who's owner named him "Tumbalo" which translated to english it means "Knock it down" or one guy, to be funny, named his dog "Como tu" meaning "Like you". So when a person asked "what's your dog's name?" they would respond "like you". That is weird.

Names are so important!  I've had lots of dogs and cats with people names.  My young border collie was supposed to be named Esme, after my favorite Terry Pratchett character, but once she arrived we started calling her Possum as a joke.  After a few weeks we realized that she answered to Possum and we were calling her that 80% of the time...she's now Possum forever!  My new bc puppy is named Kelda (again a Terry Pratchett reference) and this time it is sticking....it really suits her!  My PON is named Haddie (registered name is XXXXXXXXXX It Had to be Ewe) because I didn't "need" a puppy, but really wanted her and my oldest bc boy is Dan, after the hair pomade in the movie O Brother Where Art Thou...he's Dapper Dan Man.  I love naming dogs! 

 Oh yeah...cats are Arlo and Cera.