We had a Siamese cat, who came to us pre-named. His name was Toi (pronounced “toy”). The person I bought him from mentioned that it meant something in an Asian language (she didn’t say which) but her husband had named him, and she didn’t know what it meant. Since he was already four months old when we got him, and acustomed to the name, we kept using it.
Poor Toi has gone on to kitty heaven, but I never did find out what it meant. Any reasonable guesses? I doubt we’ll know for sure since it could mean a lot of things, but… If it helps to narrow it down(if they named him based on a noticable trait), he was shy and had big ears
Toi means “you” in french (you as an object, not you as a subject, which would be “tu”…I know…totally irrelevant, but I just suddenly realized that there was two different words in french for “you”, and couldn’t figure out at first the difference…so I today noticed something I was unaware of about french grammar because someone half-away around the world gave a weird name to his cat…)
So, apart from my newly acquired enlightment about grammar, “toi” means “you” in french, but it’s not pronounced “toy” at all, so I doubt it could be the origin of the cat’s name. (and why would someone call a cat “you”, anyway?). So, I don’t think it’s the correct answer, ** kniz **.
kniz: Tell me you were making a bad, tacky joke there.
If you give it a rising tone and pronounce the “t” without aspiration (a native English speaker would naturally aspirate the unvoiced stop at the beginning of a stressed syllable), “toi” could mean “night.” What colour is the cat’s fur?
I never talked to the seller again, and her neighbor, whom I was friends with, thought she was odd, but I’m pretty sure she realized that France is not in Asia. Thanks, though!
Actually Monty I was just looking for another way of saying the obvious, that many Vietnamese speak French, therefore a cat from there with a French name isn’t out of the question. You know this, but possibly others wouldn’t and so you’re right, I shouldn’t have done it.
here’s a highjack (is that the way you’re supposed to write it?? it’s my first, I’m not quite sure…)
So, clairobscur:
You can actually prounounce “toi” “à la Queébecoise”, with the deep quebec accent, it sounds exactly as “toy”…it’s not the correct way to pronounce it but it’s more fun to do it that way…but anyhow, that’s completely irrelevent to the OP…
