What’s in a Name?
I spent months dreaming up the names for my cats. No ordinary names would do. In the end, I kept the name Fox for my sneaky, pointy-nosed, red male. I did, however, rename my other chubby male from Winston, a regal deviation from his shelter name Cedar.
Many people name their pets using descriptive, cute names. These names, because of their mass appeal, result in names that are hackneyed. For example, I can’t come close to counting the number of Chocolate Labs I see in my practice named Hershey or Cocoa. Then you have the calico named Callie, the Jack Russell Terrier named Jack, and the ever clever Deeogee (sound it out). Over the years names like Max, Buddy, Fluffy, and Shadow have reigned supreme. While there will always be a place for those names, they have yielded to trendy names that sound more like a child’s name than a pet’s.
Perhaps the changing tide in pet names revolves around the changing perception of pet’s as family members. I’d never name a child based on his skin and hair color, but Pasty Toehead Koehl does have a ring to it. Perhaps popular pet names merely lag behind popular people names. As Chloe, Zoe, Molly, and Maggie’s pet name popularity rises, their prominence as new baby names wanes. Or perhaps, we just can’t resist a cute little tabby named Daisy and a lumbering Golden Retriever named Charlie.
Check out the list of names below!
Petfinder.com Top Pet Names for 2009
For the third year in a row, the No. 1 and No. 2 names for dogs are “Buddy” and “Max.” “Lucy” took the No. 1 spot for cats, and “Smokey” came in as the second most popular feline-forename. For the first-time in recent history, “Bella” made the list for both cats and dogs. After all, all pets are beautiful, right? (Check out 2008′s most popular pet name list.) Here’s the rest:
2009 Top 10 Most Popular Dog Names
1. Buddy
2. Max
3. Daisy
4. Lucy
5. Charlie
6. Bella
7. Molly
8. Jack
9. Sadie
10. Lady2009 Top 10 Most Popular Cat Names
1. Lucy
2. Smokey
3. Midnight
4. Bella
5. Molly
6. Daisy
7. Oreo
8. Shadow
9. Charlie
10. Angel
Have a cute and original pet name? Leave it below!
I’ve decided that my next cat will be named “Cpt. Smackers.” Does it really get any better?
1My one cat is named Harpua, the other is Hoover Minkus.
2My personal favorites have to be food names. Every patient gets called anything from “Muffin” to “Pumpkin” to “Peanut”. Two of my favorite patient names have been “Tater” and “Cheesecake”.
3As someone who competes in dog agility, I try to both choose a distinctive name and also to “name what I want.” So I have a border collie named Shiner (and she is a star) a sheltie named Hop Devil (after the beer, and she is both hoppy and devilish) and a Border collie Jack Russel mix named Nanosecond (and she is fast!)
4Terrific names, Deb! I really love Nanosecond! It’s fabulous and a name I have never, ever heard before. Reminds me of a client who aptly name his neurologically impaired puppy “Right Turn Signal”. Guess which way he always turned?
5My cat’s name was “Ash”. I realized only after his kitten shots that this was a terrible name for someone with a lisp (myself) to say loudly in a waiting room of a vet’s office.
He was a lovely ash-y color though. *lol*
A favorite was my aunt and uncle’s cat, “Sgt. Pepper” and their Great Pyrenees, Salty.
6My first cat was Zeus, because he was such a sad little thing when I was sitting in the vet’s office with him after I found him (run off by his mom and pretty much skin and bone). I decided he needed a nice strong name. In the end it seemed to suit him pretty well. He was always sickly but he was clearly king of his domain over the other cats and never let the many vet visits or medical treatments get to him.
My second cat (a calico) was named Eowyn (from the Lord of The Rings). She was also a rescue, having turned up at our apartment complex starving and pregnant at ~6 months old. She’s extremely pretty and we (all of us in the apartment) wanted her to have a pretty name. For a little while one of my roommate’s grandmother kept her and called her Brownie (she’s not even brown?!).
My dog is named Kara after my favorite character in Battlestar Gallactica. She has many nicknames including kare bear, wild thing, wigglebutt, and peanut. My boyfriend and roommate decided on the last one, because Kara is a mismarked lab (chocolate with light tan brindling on her legs and muzzle) and the colors are the same as a reese cup.
7Andrea: My husband and I considered the name “Ash” as well a while back. But Ash Koehl doesn’t sound quite right.
8I adopted a sleek and moody (but such a lover!) male polydactyl cat and summarily named him Thumbert Thumbert (after Lolita’s Humbert Humbert). I usually just call him Bert.
My other one is a petite statuesque black kitty who goes by Batface. It’s a strange name, but it somehow suits her perfectly.
9I named my litter of six foster kittens — all orange — after orange food: Cheddar, Cinnamon, Citrus, Dandelion, Pekoe and Tangelo.
10I named my Beagle puppy “Savvy” because she was the smartest of the litter….(so my ex-boyfriend’s mother said
“stubborn” may have been more appropriate in hindsight.) But how cute was Johnny Depp in pirates of the caribbean when he would say ‘savvy?’ … as in Understand?
11PS, My friend adopted two of Savvy’s siblings and named then Gateway ( beagle was marked like the computer box – black and white) and Feathers ( due to white fluffs of fur in the black areas…)
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