Naming your pet?

[Scott H]

Just wondering what thoughts you guys have on naming your pets. Do you name them after celebrities, fictional characters, people you've met? Do you give them proper names or maybe just a descriptive name ("Smoky", "Precious", etc.)?

I ask because my sister is considering getting a cat, and at one shelter she met a cat named "Pizza Party", which seemed a little weird.

[Gina Sicina]

My dog is a Black Lab with some silver fur near his hind legs and my husband's fave football team is Oakland..so since he has Oaklands colors(black & silver) we named him Raider. Luckily they're having a good season so far. I'm glad I didn't name him Jet for my favorite team with them being 1-5.

[caroline]

I give my pets descriptive names- I had a hamster named Ruby; she was an albino, hence her red eyes, i also had a hamster named Dusty. (My dog has a human name, except i named her Amber mostly because she has some brownish-orange fur) Sometimes i name them after fictional characters, too.

[Kelly]

My ex named Harley because he thought he was going to grow up to be a tough guy type dog! Boy was he wrong, he can be but he is just mush most of the time. Sasha I picked cuz it was a cutsie name, and she was sooo cute and precious looking!

[Lisa D.]

I name my dogs "people" names since I refer to them as my children. Most of them are fairly common; I've had a Hilliarye, Jesseye, Buster, Dustye, Pennye... (yes, I like -ye endings). The strangest looks are when I call over my "little old man" dog whose name is Howard (after the person who gave him to me). It fits him.

[Sabine]

We have a habit of naming all our dogs with either a "y" or "ie" ending....for example...our dogs now are:

Katie
Maggie
Mikey

Dogs we have had in the past who have passed away:

Dixie
Patty

And, of course they are always easy for them to recognize and respond to.

[Sarah]

I like names from stories, foreign words, names from Shakespeare plays, and things like that.

Though I have two dogs with pretty normal names ( Bailey and Henry )
And a Cat named Orra, which is Gaelic for Luck.

I have heard that dogs respond best to names that end in Y sounds, and if they have an R sound in there as well. That's how we came across our dogs names.



Truthfully I'm not a fan of the silly names. I like letting my pets have official names. And we give each of ours middle names, from past pets we used to have or knew. Like Cloe (my dog who had a brain tumor that caused her to become hostile and had to be put down), Harry (my siblings and my childhood lab), and Spiffy (a neighborhood cat from when me and my siblings were kids).
Bailey Cloe
Henry Harry
Orra Spiffy

[Jennifer Macklin]

My dog the name just came to me I named him Thunder he is a mini daschound and he has a very loud bark it took me a couple of days to figure out what to name him but when he barks people know why I named him Thunder for such a little guy he is very loud LOL

[fur babies]

I can't have two legged children so I have four legged fur children. When I was growing up I had all these names picked out for the kids I was going to have, so those are the names I use for my fur babies. I have gotten several from other people and their names where not the best so I would change them to something that was close to their name so they wouldn't have a problem recognizing it. I got a black Pomeranian from a friend of mine. She had named her mutt dog, I renamed her Muffy.

[Kristina]

I do not agree with changing pet's names. It confuses them and they do not know what name to respond to. You should leave their names as they are. It's the pets that matter, not their name!

[Susy]

Um how about if someone names their dog muttdog or deathbreath? or something worse like dog or puppy?

[JENNIFER MARTIN]

I name my animals on their tempermants and the things they do. For instance I have a horse named nosey, and believe me she deserves it. If their is anything new in the pasture or if someone walks in to the pasture she has go and check it out.

[Becca]

Names could be anything. I named my cat kiwi.