Upper-middles like to show off their costly educations by naming their cats Spinoza, Clytemnestra, and Candide, which means, as you’ll have inferred already, that it’s in large part the class depicted by Lisa Birnbach and others’ Official Preppy Handbook, that significantly popular artifact of 1980.
I refute this:
I’m much lower than Upper Middle Class
My undergraduate education cost less than a new car
My pet’s name is not bragging; stealth or otherwise, since most people assume it’s from a comic book
The human/cat relationship is inherently silly; and an esoteric name plays this up.
I have it on the best authority that the original Venerable Bede had little white worms in his shit, too.
Will any other Dopers admit to pretentious pet names?
Past and present names include Scruffy, Bernie, Freeway, Taz, Ziva, Brandy, Pixel, Herschel, Wendell, Leadfoot… not a lot of pretension there. I’ve always wanted a critter named Feynman.
My grandparents had a dog named Chadeaux - the spelling was perhaps a bit much. My folks had brother and sister dogs named Samson and Delilah. My sister’s newest dog has a name reflective of her job and personal preference - Bacardi.
Fergie (Scottish Terrier, named after Angus McFergus, an old leader of the Picts)
Shelby (Basset Hound, name came with the dog (we rescued her))
Mackie (Scottish Terrier, named by our then-four year old, and, imho, a great name especially given the source)
I don’t think the names make them pretentious. The fact that they’re all AKC-registered purebreds is likely more pretentious.
The only pet I have ever 100% owned was a Persian cat that I bought when I was a teenager. I called her Sid, after Sid James but everyone assumed she was Cyd named after Cyd Charisse.
Mine are only pretentious if you have lived with/known me long enough.
I’m working through the alphabet with gods and demons (historical, as well as from fiction) for the keepers, and with interesting spices for the fosters.
The only part of that I really see as pretentious is the alphabetical order, actually.
My cats are Zebulon and Jezebel. Zebulon because I’ve thought for more than 30 years that would be a great name for a cat, and Jezebel because I got his female littermate at the same time and needed a name that went with Zebulon.
Zebulon was Grandpa Walton’s name, so it can’t possibly be pretentious, and Jezebel just seems fittin’.
The only pretentious pets’ names I’ve encountered are those of breeder/show dogs, and they usually end up getting called by a nickname in their real lives. Minnesota’s governor names his dogs after areas in the state. Maybe other people would think that’s pretentious, but I think Wanamingo and Mesabi are cool dog names.
I have a dog now that bears the nickname of a guy I was in jail with once in the '70s. Her hair is the same color as his.
Nope, I have a system that’s not pretentious at all. Our dogs are Andy and Katie, which are really a filling out of ND and KD, which stand for N__'s Dog and K__'s Dog (being me and my wife). When my daughter gets her first dog, we’ll likely name it Edie, which would be short for E__'s Dog. This system started with my sister’s dog, Seedy.
A lower middle class family with two cats named Caligula and Jasmine. Also a cocker spanial mutt named Nero. Dad named them and he was an Italian immigrant.
Mojo, the compromise between some very intense family competition over names for the new boxer puppy and Kaia, who came to us prenamed although we changed the spelling from Kaya.
I don’t think either name is particularly pretentious.
My current dog is Sancho, because he’s the perfect sidekick. Which is sort of pretentious, I guess. Past dogs have all had common names. My own rules for dog names is that they should be short and something your won’t feel embarrassed to holler when the dog goes running off down the street. Spinoza, Clytemnestra and Candide all fail, imo.
The only one of my pets I named is my little dog Buddy. I don’t even know why I named him that; it just popped into my head within minutes of meeting. It must be the second least pretentious name in the English language next to “Dog”.
My oldest daughter named the cats Miso and Wonton. I don’t know where she was going with that but they stuck. We had a kitten named Squirrel but she seemed more like a Mouse so we’ve been slowly shifting with Mousie-Squirrel and Squirrely-Mouse.
I don’t have any pets, but I have a pair of owls that nest in one of my trees. I think of them as “my owls”, and when friends ask me what their names are, my response is: Mr. and Mrs. Owl, of course!
Somewhat pretentious: Tigger, Franny, Zooey, Lester, Daisy, Fiona. (the first 4 are cats, the latter two a yellow dog and cairn terrier, respectively).
We also have a Mojo, the retired K9 (German shepherd.) But he came from the trainer with the name Cujo, and is the least “Cujo-esque” dog* on the planet, so he had to have another name that he recognized.
The other two dogs were also pre-named: J.O., the working K9, named for an old colleague of his trainer (he usually gets called JoJo around the house. I’ve warned Tony that the next K9 will be named either Bubbles, Blossom,or Buttercup. He doesn’t think it’s funny.) And then there’s Sebastian, AKA “Asshole,” “Shithead,” etc. Nice dog, but headstrong as hell, and his previous owner didn’t teach him any manners. A fully-grown Pyrenees isn’t easy to train.
Not very pretentious!
And JohnMace, I had a pair of owls in the woods behind my last house, and loved watching them hunt. One year, I even got to see one of their fledglings when it took refuge under my carport during the day. Their names were Tootsie and Pop.
*The baby is currently putting her pink sparkly sunglasses on this highly-trained killing machine.
But, when you keep in mind that the AKC doesn’t allow any two dogs to have the exact same registered name, it makes sense that some of them are going to be pretty “pretentious” sounding - you run out of options if you only stick to “traditional dog” names. People who breed and show dogs as a hobby don’t name their dogs those long names because they want to impress someone or because they want to call their dog by that name; it’s more-or-less the AKC equivalent of a VIN or SSN (although they do have a registration #, I doubt anyone memorizes it).
I’ve had a few AKC registered dogs. One already had a “call” name when I got him, and I liked it just fine because it fit him (“Bubba”). But I registered him under “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” because it was available and reflected something personal. When we got Bubba a girldog, I wanted to call Dollie, so I registered her as “Baby Doll for Bubba”. I don’t think either of those is pretentious, but then, I might be a bit more pretentious than I see myself, depending on who you ask.
Let’s see. Dogwise, we have Tucker, Sally, and Hotrod. Tucker got his name from
TannerTuckerTylerTodd, which was my youngest son’s nickname as a toddler. Sally is the little sister dog, and Hotrod was already named when I got him.
Cats are named Trouble, Six, and Vivian the One-Eyed Wonder Landfill Cat. (Well, we just call her Vivian.) The other cats are very aptly named, or were when they arrived, anyway. (I don’t have six cats anymore.)
