My dog’s name is Hudson.
His pedigree name is Iglignaq Pleasant Surprise. I much prefer Hudson.
My brother accidentally inherited a pair of rabbits from moron neighbors who just abandoned them on an outdoor hutch when the family moved away. He named them Stew and Hassenpfeffer (sp?)
I once had a cat named Jane, after the Lou Reed song. It became clear that she wasn’t sweet at all, and in fact was a deadly ruthless predator living in our house. Her name transitioned to ‘Ming the Merciless’.
For a while I named all our pets after spices. We eventually ran out of good ones though.
Currently I have Kinoko (Japanese for mushroom, which is the shape a marking on his bak is in), Yin (she used to have a brother), Wysteria (yeah, she was the last one we tried to spice name), and Smokey (my nephew named him).
The outdoor kitties we feed I have christened Binary, Grayscale, and Sepia.
Well if nothing else, it certain confirms my geekiness and nerdom. (Sadly I can’t talk other house members into naming one of the cats Mandelbrot, but I want to.)
My cats’ names are kinda pretentious, I guess. My boy is named Becket after Sir Thomas a Becket (no real reason) and my girl is named Eliana, though she’s only known as Ellie. I chose Eliana because it means “daughter of the sun” - she’s an orange tabby. I looked up “orange cat names” on Google.
A propos of nothing, my neighbours have a bulldog with the coolest bulldog name ever:
Knuckles
This argument makes no sense. I am a highly overeducated (upper) middle class white male. Where I come from, having heard of Clytemnestra or Candide is not a major intellectual accomplishment. Who would be impressed by such a thing? Having an expensive car or something sends a real, costly signal to other people. You can name your cat anything the hell you want, so it doesn’t really convey much information one way or another. Educated people won’t be particularly impressed, and neither will people who don’t care very much about learning and erudition. I don’t think that educated, upper-class people can actually create intellectual credibility with pet names. If that were the case, everyone would have a pet, and every cat would be named Sobeknofru or the like.
Dolly is named for Dolly Parton. I would be considered “above” her demographic.
My dachshund/wiener dog is named Nathan, 'cause he’s such a good hotdog!
And this was suggested by a fellow Doper!
My best friend and I once plotted to name my first kitty Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke (Sidney for short). I had my eye on a Russian Blue kitten I wanted to adopt, but for various reasons I wasn’t able to.
The cat I did end up adopting came with a name - Olive, for her eyes. Naming the furry poofball Countess of anything would have been ludicrous, so Olive she stayed.
Our cat is Lightning, after the way he would tear around the hose.
Growing up we had Herbert and later Tashia, whose kittens we named Honey (for her color) and Calico Runt (usually just Runt)
My current black cat is Fezzik. Past pets were a black cat named Grover (Cleveland), a black/white/grey tabby cat named Ripley and a beautiful purebred Rottweiler named Galadriel…I didn’t name the dog, she used to be my best friends pet.
I am definitely lower middle class, at best.
Better pretentious pet names than pretentious kid’s names!
My family’s upper-middle, our cat is Candy. We got her from our friends the Cotton family… yeah, real creative. The cat doesn’t answer to it anyway, so either she doesn’t give a crap or thinks it’s beneath her. If she could name herself, she would be Her Serene Highness Candice Aurelia Chatney, Ruler of the Sofa, the Clean Laundry, and That Spot Where You’re Sitting, Too.
Typhon. He’s named after the evilest of Greek Titans. He was a naughty, wild kitten and my son was really into Greek Mythology at the time, so that’s how he got named. Is it pretentious?
I’ve begun naming my cats after places I’ve visited. So my two current cats are Paris and Vienna. At some point I’ll be getting a third cat, and its name will be either Amsterdam or Barcelona. Other names could be Chartres, Salisbury, Bryce, Maui, Giverny, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Avignon, Perpignan, Montpellier, Florence, Martinique and many more. I will never have enough cats to run out of names.
I don’t know what this says about me.
Honestly, yeah, I find that a little pretentious.
My cats are TJ, Lemmy, Ozzy, and Momo…so if heavy metal singers and made up names are pretentious, I’m guilty, lol.
Our cocker spaniel is called Jazz. No pretentiousness intended, just a fun and slightly less usual name.
Does the pretentiousness reflect my income/class?
I don’t know. How are we defining class? I’m upper-middle, I guess.
Dogs - Deefer (D fer dog), Fiona, Royce (I suppose his registered name is a bit pretentious but that was determined by his breeder.) The foster dog is Monster, not named by me.
Cats, including some of the outdoor strays that I’ve TNR’d and named: Archie, Gorman, GM (Grey Male), Bob (early kittenhood accident left him with an inch-long stub of a tail) Cheech, Feather, Elsie (Little Cat) Fanta.
I picked a hit mother cat and her two kittens up on the side of the freeway once. I named her Freeway and the kittens Onramp and Offramp.
Not pretentious at all, I don’t think.
Dogs are Loki and Freya, so named in direct revolt to my wife’s naming conventions. The cats are Booger, Ralph, and Skunkbutt. Pretentious? Frankly, I don’t give a damn.