Bandit the evil dachshund-- When we were thinking of names before we got him, we knew he was black & tan. My brother suggested “Smokey” because the dog’s black, and that make me think of a certain car-chase movie, and I suggested “Bandit”.
Moe the Betta fish-- From lissener’s instruction as to how to pronounce “Betta” in this thread. “Rhymes with Mo’ betta’ blues”…Moe Betta…
My dog is named Indy. Why? Ever see any of the Indiana Jones movies? Well, needless to say, Indiana Jones is the baddest mofo in the fictional character category. His dog’s name? Indiana. Indy. Indiana. Indy.
I have a horrible, horrible, horrible labrador named Adam. Just this week, he escaped from the backyard (because he’s the last of the evil masterminds) and our neighbor across the street thought he’d save the damned dog. Neighbor tries to put Adam in with his dog Patches…Patches hasn’t come home from the vet’s office yet. I think it’s the punctured lungs that’s holding him back.
Actually, I love this dog very much. But he has aligned himself with the dark side. If ANY other animal tries to enter his backyard, that animal is toast. Monday’s little accident wasn’t really his fault…he wouldn’t have gotten Patches if he hadn’t been let into said neighbor’s backyard.
Oh, but he was named by my schitzo sister-in-law, who, after the adorable black puppy reached 100 pounds, decided he wasn’t so cute anymore and quit feeding him. So I stole him, which is when his heart turned to darkness.
One last note: Adam is enitrely made of goo.
My current only cat is called Kobii Ashii Maru.
Yes, I named her after my favorite Star Trek movie.
Yes, DRY has informed me that I spelled it wrong.
No, I don’t care. I like the way I spelled it, and so does she. I asked her, and she purred.
The two cats I lost a few years ago at 18 years were Tasha and Gingin Ashii Maru. Tasha was Ginji and Kobii’s mom. They are all siamese breeds. I raised siamese cats for many years, and still think they are more intelligent and filled with personality than any other breed.
And no, none of my cats have ever screeched constantly. They talk when they are talked to, but don’t go around making unnecessary conversation. Has more to do with how they are raised than the breed.
[/soapbox]
My cat is named Beacon because she was found under a stack of Akron Beacon Journals.
Dogs:
Shabby - long-haired, black-and-white mutt, and the nicest dog I’ve ever had. Found her abandoned at the dump, and “shabby” is what she was. In my book, “Shabby” belongs right up there with “Snoopy” as a great dog name.
George - Great Dane, had him when my brother and I were just little kids. Limitless patience with us kids, which is rare in a dog.
Squirt - a Dalmatian who had lots of ‘accidents’.
Bones - a Doberman found abandoned on the roadside, so skinny his ribs were showing, hence the name.
Luka - a very sturdy female Malamute, and very lovable.
Grady - my brother’s dog, named after the character from “Sanford & Son”. Sorta looks like a shaggy german shepherd, but I don’t know exactly what he is.
Cats:
Spot - almost entirely white, but her face was orange and black, divided in a perfect line down the middle. Name seemed to fit her.
Ug - Short for “ugly”, this cat looked like the end of art class, when you just lumped all the loose clay together and got a multicolored mess.
Poindexter - Black cat, white paws and stomach. Once he decided to dive down our chimney, after which he was all-black for a while, poor guy.
Rocky - so named because he was grey with white paws, looking like he had boxing gloves on.
Willie - short for “Willamina”. My dad named her, no idea where he got it from.
Chester - fat orange male, one of Willie’s offspring. Believe me, he just looked like a Chester.
Punkin - beautiful Persian-Siamese mix, she was white with silver face, paws, and tail. The best hunting cat I’ve ever owned, and also the most affectionate.
Simba - a fluffy taupe dude, one of Punkin’s kids. Had the potential to be the greatest hunting cat ever (caught his first mouse at around 2 1/2 months old, caught a HAWK just before he turned 4 months). Sadly, both he and Punkin vanished, the likely victims of a mountain lion. I’ll wager they took a chunk out of that lion, though.
In general, I like to give creative names rather than people names to pets. Rule of thumb: don’t give your pet the name of a person you may eventually meet.
Two cats, currently.
Diga - 7 year old male. Black and tan tiger with beautiful green eyes and a pink nose. But quite an attitude. Ex-beau named him one day while I was at work. I had been calling him “Ian” for several days, but Dead-head beau was listening to Mickey Harts solo album, “The Diga Rhythm Band” and the name stuck. people think Diga is a girl because of the feminine “a” ending, I constantly have to correct them.
Pekoe - 3 month old female. Named after Black Pekoe Tea. She’s all black with orange eyes, she’s my little Halloween kitty. My sister named her over the phone after 2 weeks of making lists of potential names and still nothing stuck. I brough kitty home from the vet and my sister called and I said “I have my new kitty at home. Maybe I’ll call her Salem” and she said “Oh, I don’t like that name. I’m making some Black Pekoe tea right now…HEY! What about Pekoe?” And I said “Hey, that ain’t half bad!” and it stuck. people think Pekoe is a boy because of the masculine “o” ending, I constantly have to correct them.
Used to have a cat when I was little, an orange and white tiger. Fluffy was the name. My sister found her under one of the blue post office boxes soon after my parents came here from Czechoslovakia. She used to have a cat in Europe named something similar so the name stuck.
My boyfriend has 2 dogs:
Sammie - half German sheperd, half husky. Apparently he thought she was a boy when he first brought her home and named her “Sebastian” but realized soon after the female status. The name suddenly changed.
Timber - half husky, half wolf. Named after Timberwolf. I LOVE THIS DOG! HE IS MY BABY!
Timber and Sammie had a litter last year and we kept one of the pups, a male we (really, I!) named Ivan. he was so cute, a mini-Timber. But 3 big dogs was too much, he was given to a local sheriff’s deputy.
He also has 2 cats (currently):
Leo - a black and white stray he found frozen outside a 7-11 a few winters ago.
Pinkie - after Pink Floyd.
he used to have Skittles, she’s Pekoe’s mommy but was killed by a car a few weeks ago. And Hobbes, but he ran away. And Chester, but he got run over by a car right in front of us (that was the SICKEST sound I’ve ever heard!) and Zeke who got eaten by the dogs (for real).
Stop Voorvie!! Please… stop… please.
Max, Luka is a kickass name.
Our family has a West Highland White terrier named Aberdeen (Abby for short). The name resulted from a bizarre conversation between me and my sister when trying to come up with a more, well, “dog-like” name. After spending nearly half an hour disagreeing over suitable names, I sarcastically said, “Well, why don’t we name it after somewhere in Scotland, since it’s a Scottish dog? Like Glasgow or Aberdeen?” To my shock, my sister (then aged 13) replied, “Aberdeen…that’s a good name.” Cue about another half-hour trying to talk her out of the idea. But she didn’t budge, and she convinced my parents that it was a good name too.
Years later I started supporting Aberdeen Football Club. It’s nothing to do with the dog, honestly 
Wow!!
The people of the straight dope never cease to amaze me. You guys and gals are one creative lot. I leave for the dentist this morning to have my teeth drilled to Hell and I get to come back to this. Thanks one and all.
It appears from some of the responses that you’ve put some serious time and energy into naming your pet.
A few thoughts-
Wring- That’s pretty cruel naming a cat ‘mouse’. I’m keeping a watchfull eye out for you.
Spider- I think you need to move closer to the city sunshine. That rural living has done some goofin’ with your head- ‘Nickels Freckles Pickles’?.
Nipple-man- Not going there.
KimKat- What exactly happens around your place when you start yelling ‘Budweiser’?
Five- Had I been at that party I would have suggested ‘Eeearrr’.
Kuwato- I’d have gone with ‘Dildo’. Watching mothers clutch their kids and scurry away as you holler “Diilllldooooo. Dildo, where are you!?!” would be well worth any embarrassment you might have felt.
I need to go out and drink now.
Thanks for the stories, keep 'em coming if you please.
I currently live with two cats: Misty and Max.
Misty is so named because she’s shy around strangers. Whenever someone would come by, she’d vanish under the nearest furniture.
Max is short for “Maximum Cat.” I got the two cats as kittens from the pound, and kept them inside for two months. During that time, the next-door neightbor’s cat (a big, one-eared, squinty-eyed beast covered in scars) would hang outside and threaten the kittens. It would at times even throw itself bodily against the living room window. I feared that when it came time to let the two kitties outside, the big guy would kill them both. The first thing Max did was seek him out and beat the crap out of him, despite a four-to-one weight differential. Within weeks the big guy was confined to his own porch. The rest of his yard was pretty much a Max-sanctioned no-fly zone.
Maximum Cat. Slightly psycho, yes, but totally lovable and definitely maximum.
Muffin: a beautiful, loving mutt who my parents bought as a puppy a few years before I was born. Muffin was the sweetest dog you could imagine. She had to be put to sleep when I was in 9th grade. The next year, during the final day of my sophomore writing class, I read an essay about the night she died. It got more tears than my classmates’s paper on her grandmother’s suicide. God, I miss that dog.
Coco: a hyperactive cocker spaniel-poodle mix who my grandmother had had since she was a puppy. (Incidentally, Coco and I share a birthday, same year and everything.) When my grandmother entered a nursing home because of her Alzheimer’s, Coco came to live with us. She was a doll, even though she had her spastic moments… I think it had something to do with the fact that grandma used to feed her fruit punch… Coco was put to sleep my sophomore year of high school.
Bumper: my sister’s cat. We got Bumper when SisSerendipity was in kindergarten and I was in second grade. He’s orange and white, so I thought he should be named Pumpkin, but SS decided on Bumper. She now claims she has no idea where this name came from.
Marshmellow: my bunny who we got the same time we got Bumper. She looked like a marshmallow and I didn’t know how to spell it at the time. She died of liver problems when I was in fifth grade.
Indiana Jones: my timid, striped kitty who my daddy saved for me from an animal shelter on New Years Eve in fifth grade. So named because I had just seen “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”
Romeo: my family’s doofy, lovable lab mix who my mom saved from the same shelter as Indy when I was in 10th grade. His name was a compromise – I wanted a literary name and my sister had thing for Leonardo diCaprio at the time.
My older cat is named Tobermory, because I always wanted to name a cat for the short story by H. H. Munro(aka Saki) I loved the “cattitude” the original had, and how willing it was to badmouth anyone, and repeat their gossip.
My younger cat(7 months) is The Road Warrior(Roadie for short). I went to work on Friday morning, during a terrible storm. A coworker arrived, having driven in over twenty miles from the country. As she got out of the car she heard a weak meow, and one of their farm kittens came out from under the car, where it had managed to hang on for the entire wild drive. When I think of wild rides I think of the Mad Max films. We already have a Max(my sister’s cat) so the little 6 week old became the Road Warrior. He was so little I wasn’t sure if it was a he or not. If it had been a girl it would have been Tina, for you-know-who, because I couldn’t remember the names of any female characters in the films. Well, maybe she could have been Mrs. Walker, now that I think of it.
My sister’s male black lab mix is named Kona, after coffee, because he is black and hyper.
The last remnants of an 8+ generation cat family which resides with my mother are: Sweet Alice, her brother Charming Billy, and Alice’s offspring, Galoot and Tomfoolery.
Galoot was the biggest and picked on the other two in the litter, and Tomfoolery was a knucklehead always falling off of stuff and getting into various predicaments. I named them all, except Kona.
Other animal names we have had over the years:
We had a spate of Shakespearean cat names awhile back, which resulted in Romeo, Juliet, Kate, Ophelia, and Hamlet (nicknamed Hammy Hambone). Individual names that stand out:
Oliver - we got this dog when I was 4 and I don’t remember the naming process. When we called him, we used to yell “Ollie-ollie-oxen-free.” Also affectionately called “Ollie-doggy.”
Pal’o’mine - a dog of my mother’s, named because it was her best friend at the time.
Little Feat - another dog of Ma’s, named after the band.
Lady Violet Grayfoot - she started out as just Violet, but she was definitely cat aristocracy, and she was black with one gray foot . . .
Scarlett - named after a certain infamous Southern belle. She would get into trouble, and if you chastised her, she would give you this look and you could just about hear the “oh, fiddle-dee-dee!”
My friend, Kristeen, has two cats: Powers and Puddy-Tat. Puddy-Tat was named by her husband, because that’s what he is. Powers got his name because when they rescued him he had a bullet hole in his hindquarters. The doctor said that he must have had special “powers” to survive the injury. It stuck. Recently they adopted a little black female cat: Missy, also known as Hissy Missy, and The Viprous Missy. As you can probably guess, she hisses a lot. At anything. Shadows. Dust motes. That kind of thing.
Very cool story about Roadie, Baker!
I have two kitties, littermates, both all black boys with green eyes. Nobody can tell them apart but me. My college roommate and I got them from the pound 8 years ago. We were both lit majors and decided on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Within a week my roommate decided that the names were too long for such teeny kittens, so they got shortened to Rabbit, because he’s ‘sproingy’ and Gun-Shy, because he’s terrified of everything. Actually, Gun-Shy is “Gunshy”, but the vet kept mispronouncing it so he had to be modified.
My parents bought me a dog about 12 yrs ago. Her name is Lady. Lady and the Tramp was my fav Disney movie at that time.
A year and a half ago, my parents bought me a horse. Her registered name is Machos Sassy Jac. I call her Sassy, felt no need to change the name.
I know my stories of my pets are boring. But they’re cute!!
I have a pound-kitty. I got her 5 years ago. The vet who gave her the post-pound check-up said she was at least 2 years old based on her teeth. Well she was small, about 8 lbs, so I named her Petite. I figure she was probably more like 9 months old because she grew and is 11 lbs and has medium long hair so she looks larger. I figure she also was small from the pound, cause you know how cat sometimes have fleas, well in Petite’s case, it was more a case of fleas have cat. They were over 1/4 inch long (no exaggeration). But now she is your classical pampered cat who allows me to live with her.
Our striped-y kitty kitty kitty (yes, it must be repeated three times) is named Fido. Why? I have no idea. We got her from a neighbor who found her as a stray. It was the name she came with and for some reason, it suits her. She begs at the table occasionally, but other than that, she’s not very dog-like.
She’s a regal cat from the tip of her pink nose to the single white ring around her tail and she knows it, so I call her Goddess. We do worship her, but draw the line at sacrifices.
My puppy’s name is Pimpollo, nothing to do with chickens though so don’t ask. It was my sister’s boyfriend’s childhood nickname. That dog must’ve had an identity crisis it’s first few months of life we kept changing his name. He was Cocoa Puff, Simba, Mufasa, Bonsai, Shenzy, Travieso, Duende, Honey, and just Mutt in the course of about a month or too, poor thing. I affectionately call him my evil demon mutt from hell, he’s a german shepherd/ chow chow mix, he’s huge and vicious if he’s protecting the house or the family, thus the nickname.
Kitty