My dog is named Nathan. He’s a dachshund, and a Doper suggested the name, since “he’s such a good wiener dog.”
At the dog park there’s a cute little chi-weenie named Leroy. The dog’s color is brown.
Another dog is named Tyson. Not for the chicken though. His owner says when he was a puppy he liked to chew on his littermate’s ears.
So, how did you name your pet?
Duke is, in my opinion, the best name for a dog, ever. But we got a bitch, so she became Duchess.
My snake is named George for two reasons. First, there’s the “George of the Jungle” connection. Second, we weren’t sure of the gender. (In fact, I’m still not sure because he’d settled down at a size typical for males for about a decade, but in the last year or two, he’s put on another foot and some more thickness, making him more the typical size for females. We’re not breeders, so it’s not a priority to know.) Anyway, my wife had a great-aunt named George because her parents really wanted a boy. Thus, there’s some humorous family history to using George as a gender neutral name.
My previous snake was a python named Monty.
My late cat was called Clawdia because I am a sucker for bad puns… 
And when I was young and carefree I had a river snake that lived in our bathtub. Its name was “Government” because it changed its skin regularly but was always the same.
Had some in mind, but she (my new kitten) didn’t pay any attention to any of them. Then I started throwing them out left and right, trying all sorts of names. Finally, she paid attention to one. I waited and tried it again, then a third time. She perked up both times.
“Maggie”. Which to make a longer more formal name, became Magrathea Ananke.
When asked what our dog’s name is, my wife always answered, “Abby, like in ‘Young Frankenstein’”.
My dog was found with the rest of his litter in a garbage dumpster north of San Diego.
He’s named Zoidberg.
She told me her name was Sadie Mae. Who was I to argue?
Current cats:
Sapphire is a Siamese or Siamese mix with brilliant blue eyes, and I got her in September. The September birthstone is sapphire. She didn’t respond to her shelter name. We got her when she was about a year or a year and a half old. She’s a crochety old lady kitty of about 14 now.
Shadow was given to the Humane Society when he was about four, and he responded to his name, so I was advised not to change it. I was going to call him Jack. He’s an orange kitty. He still had his balls at 4, when we got him, but he doesn’t seem to miss them. I think that he’s probably the most affectionate cat we’ve ever had.
My husband named Charlie. I don’t know why he felt that Charlie was a good name. I usually call this cat Charliepants, but I have no idea why. He’s an exceptionally handsome orange tabby and white. Charlie responds very well to either Charlie or Charliepants, especially when I call him. I should call him Mr. Grabby Hands, because every morning, when I make my tea, I feel a pair of paws kneading my butt. He’s always staring at me when I’m up, apparently I fascinate him.
Chaos is a blue grey girl, with tiny white flecks. Bill wanted to call her Spot, but I felt that her name was Chaos, and yes, it was her behavior that inspired this. Well, that plus the old Infocom text adventure Wishbringer. Her first family called her Cinderella, but they rarely paid attention to her, so she didn’t know this name. She was mostly kept outside, and fed only occasionally. I would have kept her name as Cinderella, and called her Cindy, had I known about this first name…but Chaos suits her very well. She is completely uninterested in ever going outside again.
My daughter’s cats:
Achilles is a grey tabby and white boy, with a dark mark on one of his ankles.
Mere or Meer sort of picked her own name. My husband tried to call her Spike, but she didn’t respond to it. She would respond to Mere, though. “C’mere, little kitty” always brought her running.
We recently took in a litter of four stray kittens. Long story short, their stray mama got killed, we discovered their existence four days later, and we spent about a week getting them all caught.
We caught one, and then another the same day. For the moment (and for my Facebook page, which suddenly was the most popular it had ever been because TINY KITTENS), we called them “Thing One” and “Thing Two,” and then “Blackie” and “Brownie” (which were never intended to be permanent names).
That night there was a big storm, and Three and Four didn’t show up till the next evening, but we caught them together. Since One was black and white and Two was calico, we decided to continue the pattern and designate the second black-and-white one “Three” and the second calico “Four.”
OK, so now we needed to get them to the vet, where they’d need “real” names. At this point we were figuring we’d keep the first two and find homes for the other two. So we basically needed “throwaway” names.
Mr. S came up with the neat idea of naming them with names that were kind of like their numbers. Reminiscent. Suggestive of numbers. OK, so we came up with:
Ace
Doozy
Tribble
Quark
As it turned out, Ace and Tribble are boys, and Doozy and Quark are girls. And as it also turned out, nobody really came forward to snap up any of the extras in that first week, and in the meantime, you can’t take care of four ridiculously adorable kittens for a week without falling madly in love, so . . . we now have four cats. 
They were about 6 weeks when we caught them, and now they’re about 5 months old. Tribble already weighs 8 pounds! The boys have been neutered and the girls go in next week. And yes, we are crazy. But they are so much fun!
I am of the opinion that an animal knows its own name. You, the human, must try to figure it out by observation and deduction. For example, when we adopted our last dog from the pound (via a rescue organization), my husband asked me what we should name her. She showed us within 10 minutes by trying to get under the chain link fence in the small yard at the pound. She became Bess, for Bess Houdini, Harry’s wife and assistant. Harry was the famous showman, but Bess did the actual disappearing during the Metamorphosis illusion.
Chimera gave the other example: the animal responds to its name. You can call your pet “Precious Sweetums Fluffybutt” 'til the cows come home, but they’ll ignore you if their name is actually “Maggie”. 
Not scientific in the least, but it works for me!
We named our cat “Lightning” because as a kitten, he tore around the house. That was 19 years ago, so the name doesn’t really fit any more.
My cat came already named from the woman fostering her. She named her “Whitney” because, her exact words, “She’s black and she sings.” Yeah, she was a little off.
My sister had a doberman named Bubbles because she ate soap. She also had a Himalayan cat named Chewie, which was short for Bubbles chew toy.
I have four budgies; a yellow, a green, a blue and a purple. There names are Yellow, Green, Blue and Purple.
Leon reminds me of Jean Reno’s title character from the movie; he is a strange mix of focused-to-the-point-of-exclusion methodical-and-deadly adult and crazy repressed-but-desperately-wants-to-cut-loose child. He cracks me up.
Tina Tinycat isn’t the Munchkin I wanted, but she is much smaller than average. She’s now fully grown and weighs just over 7 pounds.
Heidi recently passed away, but she got her name because for the first 3 months she lived with me, I hardly ever saw her. She was so scared and skittish (even tho she was the only cat and only other living creature in the house) that she hid in my closet under a road box.
Veterans Day 2012 going to the pound to get a new cat. Kids (ages 16-19) have picked Sgt. Slaughter for a name (keep in mind this is all sight unseen). Wife (age, well never mind) votes over her dead body. Me (old enough to know better), eventually gently suggests we stop torturing her and come up with a new name.
Oldest, big Forrest Gump fan, comes up with Lt. Dan. Wife can’t really argue with that one but after girl cat picked out declares she will call her Lou. And tells the vet that’s her name. That lasted until this year when she went for her checkup and the wife updated the record to be Lt. Dan - which prompted the vet to laugh since Jenny was in the next examining room.
My brother once got a cat and wanted to name it Faravelli, but our mom refused to stand on the front porch yelling that, so we called him Chico instead.
Then my parents had a cat that had two boy cats, and we named them Bob and Ray.
When we acquired Spike and Arnie they had already been named, and we were fine with that. Except “Arnie” (the name ) went through some changes . Arnie became Arnie Barnes, then Barney, Barney Google, and finally Googlepuss. All the while retaining his original Arnie nature, his Arnie-tude.
Took us a long time to come up with the name for “Shorty”. We finally named her in honor of the acidheads who lived in the place before we did, and who were in the habit of wearing oversize raincoats that they would hunker down in and wrap around themselves, making them look like short, fat people - short fat people who would walk down the street calling each other “Shorty” and not saying much else. In fact “Shorty” was about all they would say, and seemed to be almost a language all its own, much like Malkovitch
How it took us three weeks to name her I don’t know, but it finally came to me like a blinding flash of light, and I yelled, “Shorty!” - and everybody knew what I meant.
Both cats are rescues, named by the pound. I had wonderful intentions of changing their names to something cute and clever, but after a 20 minute ride home, with them yowling in the carrier, I had repeated their names (punctuated with a “Shut up dammit” so many times, that I just kept the names.
