When he first came to us as a stray kitten in 1999, he was very disheveled and mangy looking, so I wanted to name him Scabbers. Everyone else who heard this just hated it. A friend suggested that if we wanted a Harry Potter name we could name him Gryffindor. We actually hadn’t been that committed to a Harry Potter name, I just thought Scabbers was funny … but Gryffindor seemed very elegant and classy. He is more often known around the house as Gryffin or simply The Gryff.
All cats:
Pigeon- dig animal names for other animals.
Milo- after the film Milo & Otis[/I
Pixie- his kitty adoption papers had him sexed as a female- they were very wrong. He is now known as Pixie-bob.
Hawkeye- after Benjamin “Hawkeye” Pierce of MASH
My dog Jessie is named that because she looked like a Jessie. Although I did get in trouble from my brother who had just had a daughter named Jessica 
My cats are all named from Japanese origins. They’re all orange tabby males.
Kyo - little orange kitty named after an orange kitty in an anime
Rabi - little one eyed kitty named after a one eyed anime character
Koji - Japanese for orphan. I got him when he was all of one day old.
Osugi - I think this is the name of some Japanese fashion designer? So said a Japanese friend.
Well I’ll be darned.
If she’d been orange, that’d be even funnier.
Sienna was named for the color of her ears, though she acquired a middle name “marie” somehow.
Glo’ey (idk how to do the icelandic characters) is a brindle mix breed and we wanted a fire name to go with her orange coat. it means “ember” in Icelandic. She is also known as the Glo-Wyrm, which is a sort of horrible pun.
We have multiple names for all our cats. One is a small gray cat whose name is Quicksilver. We also call her Little Gray. When the second gray cat came along, we decided to call her Graycie and she also goes by Other Gray.
I have a cat who was named Marigold, after a character in an L.M. Montgomery book. When I got married, my husband started calling her Kitty, and pretty much everyone calls her that now. I’m thinking it may change again, to “DeeDee,” because that’s how my 2 year old pronounces “Kitty,” and we’re all starting to say it that way now! 
Tango was named by my ex-GF. It was a mangle of “Yo “tengo” un perro.”
I had a cat name Tuesday, because he showed up on a Thursday. (It made sense at the time.)
When I was a kid we had a cat named John Muir.
And Wolfgang the big, sweet golden retriever.
I bought our black lab at a Ducks Unlimited fundraising auction. I think the organizers had already determined that I would be a “mark” because I lived on a ranch and would be able to care for a puppy. The minute I walked in to the fundraiser, someone asked me to “hold the puppy for just a minute” while they did something. I didn’t let him go all evening.
At some point, my husband muttered that “if I bought the dog, it was going to live in the barn.” Our friend, Paul, began calling the puppy Barn Dog. Come auction time, I outbid everyone for him.
His registered name is Barn Dog Dot Com. He answers to Barn Dog or BD but NOT Barney.
hehehehe!!!
I tried to come up with a name for my dog for a coupla days before I got her, but nothing really stuck. When we got to the breeder, they had named her Dolly for Dolly Parton because she “sings” when she yawns. She’s also very blonde. My folks had actually just come back from a trip to Dollywood so we found it to be pretty appropriate and kept it.
Turns out that when she got older she ended up having a large and powerful chest. When she puts on weight her belly still looks slim but her collar gets tight because she gains all her weight in the chest. So her name turned out to be even MORE appropriate, and I tell people she’s named after Dolly Parton “because she’s a chesty blonde that sings”
I have three cats. Tobermory, the first, was named for the cat in the story by H.H. MUnro(Saki) Vladimir was adopted from a friend with his name in place, but he’d been named that for his rather long canines. Attila was named for the cat in the comic strip Mother Goose and Grimm.
For a next pet I’m thinking of continuing with the name of another psychotic ruler. Genghis, maybe, or George.
2 cats, both rescue animals. I found the first one along a railroad track so I named her Hobbes (short for hobo). The other cat was named after the 30th President.
Cricket, my mini-aussie’s name was from the breeder, but I liked it so I kept it.
Maisie is my cat’s name and it came about because she was my first cat, and I didn’t know that all tabbies have an “M” on their foreheads. I wanted an “M” name and Maisie is just such a sweet, charming old-fashioned name. And it suits her, she’s a sweet charming cat.
DeeVee my hand-raised cockatiel is actually named Dark Vader, she’s a grey, but a very dark grey, not the usual dusty dove grey of most grey cockatiels. So Dark Vader= D.V. = DeeVee.
Babe is my rescue cockatiel, the guy who originally rescued her and then placed her with me named her.
I found a little gray kitten in a rainstorm and rescued her. She was undersized from starvation, so I called her Dinky. My mother told me that it was a horrible name and she needed something with more dignity. So, Dignity she was (Diggy for short, though Dig Nitty is her rapping name).
My niece has two kittens of her own, Epa and Dahlia, though which is which I’m hard-pressed to say. Dahlia because she and her boyfriend were obsessed with the Black Dahlia a few months back and Epa because…well. She misheard Eve’s name in Wall-E.
Holly cat - Her mum was killed a week after she was born and I got her 1 week later to hand raise. She survived until Christmas so she got a Christmassy name (still going at 14years).
Tigerella trouble cat - was named after a tomato. I just liked the name. The trouble came later.
Bellamy bunny - The Goodies The Goodies (TV series) - Wikipedia did a Watership Downs parody Animals (The Goodies) - Wikipedia way way back in the dark mists of my childhood http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDsLZmGBdt8. One scene had then hopping around in bunny suits looking for a bunny suited David Bellamy. Beeeellllllllammmmmyyyyyy---------Beeeeelllllaaaammmmmyyyyyyyyy-----
I decided that one day I would have a rabbit and name him Bellmay. When I first got Bel his name was Stewart - there was no way I was going to have a rabbit who could be called Stew!
Ghost is named for the halloween special It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. There’s a scene where they are making costumes and a kid cuts way too many holes in his sheet (he wants to be a ghost). Winky is named that because she has only one eye, and therefore is always winking. Pic.
Oh sure. After the president. Right. 
I was reading the Aubrey-Maturin books when we acquired our little beagle, so she was named Sophie, after Jack Aubrey’s wife.
Bat is blind, black, and I found her on Halloween.
Nijel the Destroyer earned his name when we first brought him into the house. He had been a feral cat we fed but couldn’t touch, but we had to catch him and get him fixed. We put him in the spare room to recover before releasing him, and he managed to tear the room apart, break his stiches and bleed everywhere, then pull up a floor register cover and get about 25 feet down the duct, requiring us to remove a chunk of ceiling and duct to get him out. He has since mellowed out considerably.
Mrs. Peel was sleek, gorgeous, and fabulous, with an adventurous streak.
Milo is just, well, Milo. It seemed a good name and stuck.
Pearl came to us with that name, and since she is an irritant surrounded by shiny prettiness, it works. We tried a couple other names, but Pearl is who she is.