Naming names
Little excites dog owners more than naming their new pets. What kind of dog-namer are you? Traditionalist, humanist or WTF-ist? Plus: A contest for the best OPD namer!
This week one of my favorite fosters (I realize I say that a lot; I truly adore our foster homes) got an incredibly cute six-month-old puppy from someone who had gotten it right before her life got too complicated to keep it. The pup was named Juno and the foster, Liz, said since the owner had only had her a very short time, she didn’t answer to the name.
Also, since Juno ends in “no” any Serious Trainer would tell you it’s not ideal. I’ve also read you’re not supposed to name your dog “Kit” because it rhymes with sit and “Shay” because it rhymes with Stay. I’m okay with Debby because it doesn’t rhyme with “Get off the dining room table you little brown gremlin,” which is pretty much the only command I use.
So today Liz posted in the volunteer group asking for name suggestions. The group members admirably rose to the task. Several people suggested Junebug; I said no because we already have a Junebug and it gets too hard for those of us who have to keep track.
Avoiding reruns
Frequently, we have multiple dogs with the same names: Hank 1, Hank 2, Hank 3. (If you’re considering giving away your dog, please try and give it a unique name. Your future intake coordinator will thank you.) Other suggestions included Jujube, Jupiter, Jemma, Juniper, Flopsy, Willa and Princess J. Cookie. My contribution: Marigold.
I love flower names. Sheryl, our president, once requested I stop giving my fosters flower names. She was tired of it. I had a Dahlia, Hydrangea, Fiorello (“little flower”) and Wisteria. (Wisteria and Fiorello ended up staying with me forever.) I also had a Rhubarb, but he came with that name and when he was adopted out, his adopter changed his name to Henry (Rhubarb became his middle name).
We only give names to dogs who don’t already have one or are too young to know theirs yet. I think our foster homes love it. It’s particularly nice with a mill dog because they get a new name to go with their new life. The foster homes often will wait to meet them to sort of determine their essence.
There’s also the thing of having a name in mind before you get the dog, as I did with Otto. I actually had a dream about a Boston terrier. His eyes were two giant circles and his nose and eyebrows made two Ts—hence, a visual depiction of “Otto.” I also had a foster who came to me with the name Buddy. He was such a dark, serious fellow that I changed his name to Moses. He commanded that gravitas.
Picking the name
I was reading some articles on naming your dog—most of them were pretty silly. Like, “If you have a hobby, choose something connected to it. If you knit, how about Purl?” I knew someone with a dog named Prozac, which was perfect because his anxiety was his hobby.
When my Aunt Mattie and I picked up Debby (her name was Cookie then), we were sitting outside the mobile adoption unit in Queens. A woman walked up and saw her and said, “Oh you’re going to adopt her? You should name her Mocha!”—because she is brown! Mattie, true to form, sort of didn’t respond, and then the woman said, “Or Cocoa, or Cappuccino!”
I think you see where this is going. She looked at Mattie, pleading, and Mattie said flatly, “I am deciding between Amy and Debby.” The woman frowned and walked away. (I do miss all the frowning and walking away I encountered when Mattie was still with us.)
When my parents were going to Italy a lot, they were naming their dogs Gina and Tony and Vinny and Frankie. Mattie also had a basset hound named Norman, a fluffy grey dog named Harry and later a Boston terrier called Raymond.
A favorite of mine from my old neighborhood was a guy who had a female Jack Russell terrier named Jayne Russell. She was a real bombshell, too.
I’ve also heard people advise against naming your dog something you won’t feel comfortable yelling in a dog park, like Killer or Jackass or Get Away Creep.
What kind of namer are you?
So there are a lot of ways to think about naming your dog. Many of them are pretty weird (to me) but then what’s more personal than your dog’s name?
You could come up with a long list of dog name categories, but to keep it simple I think you can boil it down to three:
•Typical dog names—Buddy, Princess, Duke, Champ
•Human dog names—Charlie, Maggie, Lucy, Max, Edwina
•Things important to you—your favorite athlete or actor, food, a place. I knew a guy with three dogs named after Miami Dolphins. We have a new Chewie in our building. My son asked them if it was for the company that would take all of their money (Chewy!), but turns out they’re just Star Wars fans. And everybody in New York knows many dogs named Brooklyn. There have to be a few furry Harlems out there too.
There must be a genetic component to this because, like my mother and Mattie, I lean toward normcore human names like James, Barbara, Stuart and Bill. We recently had a dog come in named Richard. And you heard about Bruce last week. I’ll always vote for a dog name befitting an actuary or someone from the HR department.
There are also dogs named after their qualities—like Speedy or Rascal or maybe the OG of the genre, Snoopy. Liz said she was thinking about Cheez-It because this puppy kept stealing hers. In the end she narrowed it down to Poppy and Ivy and her husband selected Ivy. Lovely name for a lovely girl!
A contest with a real prize!
All of which brings me to the first Other People’s Dogs subscriber contest. I know you’re all into dog names. In the comments let me know your all-time favorite dog name and how you came up with it.
The best name—as chosen by me and my surly eight-pound editorial assistant not named Mocha—wins a prize. If you’re a free subscriber, you win a free paid subscription. If the winner is already a paid subscriber (thank you!) you win a signed copy of any of my books of your choice.
Oh and one note: I have a hunch many of you will want to share your nicknames as well. That is fine, but this competition is for your actual dog names. I’ll have an upcoming post devoted to nicknames. Reader, I know it’s a thing.
My Italian uncle had a basset hound he named Poppaea, after the Roman empress (and second wife of Nero). I do love the idea of naming dogs after ancient royalty 👑
The name we picked before we got our wonderful friend: Dougal. There was an Irish sitcom in the 90‘s about priests, because Ireland I guess. Father Dougal was played by Ardal O‘Hanlon as a big enthusiastic, affectionate man child. O‘Hanlon said he played the character as he would a family dog, and as we met dogs, we would rate them as to how „Dougally“ they were. It became a shorthand to focus down on the kind of dog we wanted, until we found our rescue supermutt, the memory of whom I still so cherish.