A year and a half or so I adopted a house panther from a rescue. They’d named him Freddie Mercury. Of course, I’d need a nickname for everyday use, right? So, Fred or Freddie, right?
Well, no. Way back I had a cat named Fred – yes, the caboose on the trio from whom I took my screen name here. So now what? I went with Merc.
Which has got me wondering: does everyone retire a pet’s name when it dies? Or do some folks have no problem with giving a succession of pets the same name? Or revive a name for one later pet?
I knew at least one person that used the same name for either 2 or 3 of her dogs. They were Keeshounds named Keisha and Keisha 2 (and possibly Keisha 3?).
If it makes a difference, she really leans into the “I’m super quirky” thing.
I’ve only re-used a pet name once, back in childhood, 3rd grade. The collie puppy we got was named Cindy, but it died in 3 weeks from distemper. We got another one quickly, and I insisted on naming it Cindy. Somehow I thought it would give our first Cindy some secondhand connection with a longer life. All pets before and after that (many dogs, two cats) had unique names.
Well, one of my neighbors has called all of her dogs “Stinker”, but that’s not the actual name of any of them. Current one is Keynsie, and before that was Mina.
Every pet has had a unique name, even chickens. I had an aunt who named every one of her schnauzers the same. When one Wynn died, she’d replace it with another Wynn, I think from the same bloodline. It would have made it difficult over the years to keep them straight, except every single one of them (I think there were four in total) was a totally neurotic little shit so I didn’t care to get to know any of them.
I can appreciate that special case. But otherwise, I think it’s disrespectful to a former pet to give the next one the same name. I’ve never done that. It’s not really about the pet, who doesn’t care, but about preserving the unique memory of who the first one was.
I had no problem changing names of fosters I kept over the years. Mostly unnamed kittens. But I had a couple young dogs that already had terrible names. I mean I’m not calling for Bee-otch for her dinner. Just wrong.
My own pet choices I thought long and hard about names, trying to mitigate any issues later.
Not as much as I did my kids, but I thought. Still fouled it up.
My little rescue Yorkie I named Grace. My son and dil were having the first baby girl and she said she had always wanted to name her child Grace. Well, too bad. My Grace was already there.
Heck I changed my daughters 2 Chihuahuas names. W/O consulting her. Hey, their names were embarrassing. My choice is much much more better.
Oh, daughter didn’t care. And it was better than me calling them the LittleShits all the time.
Haven’t really had an opportunity. My cats are all rehomes, as were a few of our lizards, and my wife refused to let me rename any of them. Which is fine, though I’m 100% certain the lizard (a savannah monitor) would have ever noticed.
But the nicknames are endless, so each cat has more than one, for variety. The default, “Trouble” can be used for either, and often is on a daily basis.
Definitely, not right away, but eventually. E.g. my sister had a dog called Kim when we were kids. She now has a new dog called Kim, I call her Lil Kim (despite being bigger than original Kim, who was a Welsh Springer spaniel. Lil Kim is a retriever)
Of course it was! You have a genius knack for naming pets, whether it’s Jojo for the adopted stray cat, Bayliss for the tail-less pup, or Clarence for the late beloved possum! You should market your naming skills as a service!
I think it’s just that you love animals and bond with them, and just naturally give them names that suit their character. That’s not a trivial observation. It should be taken as a very deep compliment.
My family doesn’t re-use cat and dog names as such. But one of my nieces and her partner currently have a dog who shares my late mother’s name. I don’t think my mother would have minded; she liked dogs.
And another niece wound up with a name that, while spelled differently, sounded the same as the name of my first cat. So I suppose you could say we recycle names between species?
And if we consider nicknames, I had a pair of kittens whose joint nicknames were “Chaos and Destruction!” I never tried to figure out which one was Chaos and which one was Destruction. Whatever havoc was being wrought, it was generally by both of them together.
We have two cats who were supposed to be short-term fosters (so we didn’t rename them) who came with names used by humans in the extended family. We call them our awkwardly named pets.
I’ve never reused a pet name, but i used to know a guy who had a succession of big fluffy white dogs, and he gave each one the same name as its precessor. It did mean that when i visited, I always knew the name of his dog. But i thought it was weird. And he said it sometimes confused the dogs, because he and his husband would have expectations based on the prior dog.
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