Kept the name of the dog named Silver. Renamed the cat formerly named Honky (renamed him Max). Renamed the cat formerly named Sorry Sue (renamed her Parcheesi, which sort of morphed into Parquesa). Max and Parquesa both came from the same clueless nitwit and cats don’t care what you call them anyway.
I pretty much kept the same name for all my horses but they’re not exactly pets. One of them, the guy who gave me possession said, with a straight face, “Her registered name is Sobriquet, but we call her Spooky.” I had to go look up what Sobriquet meant. I wish I’d known it at the time; I think he was giving me what was supposed to be a funny line, but how many 14-year-olds know that word? But I called her Spooky, too.
My 2 rescue cats came named Ruby and Char. Ruby I kept, it fit her even tho she’s a brown tabby and not red, like you would expect.
Char, on the other hand, was so-named because he had been rescued from a burning house and was badly burned. I just couldn’t call him that… it was like I would be reminding him of the horror every time I said his name. So he became Charlie. I have no idea how old he was when I got him, but it didn’t take him long to catch on to his new name… when I call him he comes running just like one of the dogs! He is the coolest cat in the world!
I voted “depends on their age”. My two were 12 weeks old when I adopted them so I wasn’t too interested in keeping the names Jack and Chrissy (I’m assuming Janet got adopted?), so I renamed them to Becket and Ellie.
My dog KC has been called Fuzzybutt by me so often that she’ll answer to it as quickly or more so than her original name (KC). She was 3 when I got her.
She answers to KC, Fuzzybutt, Fuzz, Fuzzy and Fuzzbutt
So if you want to rename, go ahead. The animal will figure it out.
I voted other. For my current animals (4 cats and a dog) I have chosen people names. One of my cats was named by shelter staff and the name (Manny) fit him perfectly. So, if the shelter name fits, I’d keep it. For an older animal that knows its name, I’d keep that, too. All my pets have nicknames that they get to know.
If the animal was coming to me directly from the former owner, was an adult animal and knew its name, I would probably leave it.
I never keep shelter/rescue names, because they usually just made that name up very recently. Why do they have more claim on a permanent name than I would?
If it is a young animal, or doesn’t seem to really know its name, then I change it.
It depends whether the pet already has a name and if I like it. I adopted my current dog, a Black Lab, whose name was Brutus. It didn’t seem to fit his breed or personality, and I decided he should have a friendlier name. I called him Bruce for a couple of days, since that was close enough to Brutus that I thought he would adjust, but it sounded too short and curt to me. I decided his name should have two syllables. So I started calling him Brewster and he adjusted to it very quickly. Although, most of the time, I end up just calling him Brew for short. But he responds to either. There’s no confusion on his part.
Before him, I adopted a black Lab/Chow mix named Whitney. I liked that name, so I kept it for her.
I have had other dogs that didn’t have names when I adopted them. They all learned their new names quickly and usually started to respond to them within a half hour. In my experience, the age of the dog doesn’t matter much, either. I’ve adopted puppies as young as 11 weeks and dogs as old as ten years. As long as you use the dog’s name only to praise and use it frequently (It doesn’t hurt to have conversations with your dog and use its name. Dogs thrive on being a part of your family.), they can adjust to a new name fairly quickly.
It depends. I’ve adopted two adult cats from the Humane Society. With one of them, she didn’t know or respond to her shelter name, so I went with Sapphire. I got her in September, sapphire is September’s birthstone, and she’s Siamese or part Siamese, and has lovely blue eyes. She quickly learned that if I said Sapphire, then I was probably going to pet her or give her food. This is the cat who also got her foot stepped on and limped, and even after the bruise healed she’d limp if you said “Poor Sapphire!” in a pitying tone. She quickly learned to make a vocalization that sounds like Mama, because I fussed over her the first time she said it.
Then there’s Shadow. He was four years old when I got him, and he’d been surrendered by his former owners, who hadn’t bothered to get him neutered. But he did know his name. I planned on changing his name, as I don’t believe that Shadow fits a plump orange cat, but the woman at the shelter told me that he responded well to his name, so that he should keep it.
We got Charlie at the same time we got Shadow. His shelter name was Simon, but he didn’t respond to it. He responds to Charlie now. He loves to play fetch, but sometimes he drops his toy and my husband tells him to bring the toy back. Mostly he remembers that he needs to give the toy to Bill before the game can resume.
We sort of got roped into taking in a blue-grey kitty when her owners went off on a 10 day cruise and left her outside. Since they mostly kept her outside anyway, we just took her in, and told her that she was an inside kitty now. She didn’t argue, she’s perfectly happy to be INSIDE where she has food and water available at all times. She loves to look out the patio door and watch the squirrels and the birds, but she doesn’t even like having the door opened. Anyway, her first name was Cinderella, which was a good name and I’d have kept it if I’d known it, but we renamed her Chaos, which is the perfect name for her. She’s really my husband’s kitty. Right now, he’s out of town on a hunting trip, and she’s crying because she misses him.
I change the name in a heartbeat if I don’t like it, dog or cat. Speaking from a lot of experience, they’ll learn a new name extremely quickly. Calling a dog (or cat) so it will respond depends more on context, body language and tone than the word you use.
As far as animals on petfinder - if the animal doesn’t have a name and the organization doesn’t want to think one up, petfinder has a random pet name generator widget. So it’s not like the dog or cat really identify with their name, especially if they’re in a shelter.
I’ve fostered many dogs over the years, most strays or puppies that came to me with no names. I can only think of one adopter who kept the name either the rescue or I chose (a Rottweiler x Chow I named Fabio) and I keep in touch with adopters after they take the dog.
I’ve adopted a lot of strays throughout my lifetime, and since they won’t tell me their names, I usually pick them. (The exception to this was Ailey, whose former owner named him Alias because he looked like a cat she had already. :smack:)
I tend to give my cats people names, and with the exception of my most recent addition, Sam, they have literary connections. Maya was named after Maya Angelou, Katie (RIP) was named after Kate Chopin, Jack was named after Jack Reacher (character in the series by Lee Childs).
I got an older puppy from a breeder that was hoping he’d turn out to be show-quality, but had too much tan (for a black & tan cocker spaniel). He was over 6 months old, and was called Bubba. Since he was a big, friendly galoot of a cocker spaniel, I decided it fit him and kept it.
I renamed a few rescue cats, even though they were older. It’s not like they’d come when called by a name, anyway.
Pardon me for pointing it out, but Lucy wasn’t Charlie Brown’s sister. She was Linus’ big sister. Charlie Brown had a little sister named Sally, with blonde hair and a “princess” attitude, who had a crush on Linus.
When we took in the stray that lived at my husband’s old apartment when we moved into a house together, he went from being an outside-only stray cat to being an inside-only house cat. He LOVED it. He never tried to go outside and would avoid going near the door if it was open. He had clearly had enough of life on the streets and didn’t want to return to it when he had such a cushy new life.
It depends on whether or not I can bring myself to use the name and whether or not it seems to fit the animal.
Ginger and Holly were named by their foster parents and we kept the names because they fit and we weren’t horrified by them.
Iggy started out as Tiny Tim (foster mother) then went to Beamer (abusive owner) and then we named him Iggy. We Didn’t much like Beamer, mostly because we’re childish and it made us both think of nipples. We didn’t name him Iggy either though. Our dog trainer came up with it and we liked it.
In our household, dogs have human names, but cats do not.
The first dog we adopted came with the name Sam. It was a great name and suited him. We kept it. The second was a puppy and not yet named so we named him Joe. Our third was called Mabel when we got her. That fit the human name requirement, but we hated it so she became Katie. Our most recent dog was called King, so his name got changed to Georgie.
We’ve got three dogs, all of whom have different names than the one that we met them with. None of them really responded much if at all to their adopted names. When this happens, we make a big list of names that we think would be neat for that dog, and go down the list, testing each one out. The name that gets the best response becomes the dog’s new name.
It definitely depends on the pet’s age, but it also depends on the type of pet and the pet’s individual temperament. If it’s a dog and it already comes to other words besides its name, then it’s pretty easy to change the name. For pets that aren’t expected to come, there’s no reason to keep the name.
Oh, yeah. There’s one more criterion: whether or not we can think of a name that is better. When you get a dog named Snowball that looks like she’s made of snow, there’s no reason not to keep the name.
Yeah… I got a rescue puppy that was a dachshund/beagle mix and looked mostly like a weenie dog. His name was “Peter.” We changed that the minute we got home. There was no WAY we were having a weiner dog named Peter in the house, just no way.
