When I was growing up, we had a slew of pets, and my mother was quite imaginitive about naming them:
A mastiff-shepherd mix was named Moose, because he was big and brown.
An all-black female cat with a single white dot at the tip of her tail: Merlin, because the tail looked like a magic wand. (We actually called her Precious most of the time, though.)
A gray-black striped female cat who bounded into our house as stray during a snowstorm: Tigger
Tigger’s singleton male kitten, born about six months later: Pyewacket, for the familiar in Bell, Book, and Candle, which was my mother’s favorite movie at the time. (This cat was more typically called Dumb-Dumb, because he was too smart for a cat, but too dumb to be human.)
Pure-bred, AKA registered female German Shepherd: Mountain Samantha Majesty (or something along those lines), called Sam.
Several pure-bred Labrador Retrievers. I’ve forgotten the full registered names, but they were all names that my mother felt were Scottish–Molly, McDuff, and Butch are the ones I remember.
A golden retriever with ADD: Falderal, aka Folly.
The cat that Mr. Kiminy and I got at a yard sale as our first pet was a full-grown, gray-black striped cat named Cricket. We never knew where the name came from, but we used it anyway.
Our current cats are Paka and Minou. When we acquired them, our daughter was teaching herself Swahili for fun, and she said that Paka means “cat” in Swahili. (I have never tried to confirm or deny this–the name just stuck.) Minou came with the name “Baby,” but we changed it to Minou, which is French for kitty-cat.
We have recently acquired three hermit crabs, and our daughter named them Kitty, Tyan, and Kyon. She told me that Kyon means “king” according to baby name lists, but she just likes the sound of Tyan. Kitty is just Kitty for some reason.
My brother had a black cat that he named White Dog, just to be weird.