As long as this is a lighthearted thread, I’ll add my own family’s recent drama. It involves people not pets though.
My mother has always been a bit interested in her family’s history so recently my sister bought her an ancestry.com membership as well as paid for some sort of local professional to help my mom get started. My mom is the youngest of 7 siblings who are in their 70s and 80s now but none of the others had any interest in finding things out. Her own parents were of limited help as life was always too busy… or she thought. It isn’t clear who knew what.
My mom’s father (Grandpa William) had always told everyone that his dad (Richard Eisenheimer) had run away when William was 12 and left his mother, “Nanny”, with William, John (9), David (7), and Carol (5). Nanny, as per the stories, was always loved by all and she ended up working for priests in a rectory to make ends meet. So my mom on her 2nd day of getting deep into the ancestry tools discovers Richard Eisenheimer and then finds his children, William, John, Carol, David, and James???. BUT they have birthdays off by 15 years??? Oh, wait, there are two sets of people with the same names- one in Minnesota and one in California??? And that is the day that my mom discovered that her grandfather abandoned his family, ran away with the 18 year old whose family STILL 90 years later lives down the block from the family house, moved to California, started a 2nd family, and tried to paint over his existing children by naming his new ones the exact same thing.
My mother hates ancestry.com. No one in the extended family knows, because surely some of them know something… But in all honesty, my grandpa William was one of the greatest, most genuinely awesome people out there ever. And it really is rather insulting that someone tried to erase him.
This is all to say that not only are pet names reused… so are human names. I can start another thread with more details if anyone wants the whole story.
