My first cat came with the name James Bond. Since he new his name I didn’t bother to change it.
My second cat I named Han Solo. I like themes.
I always said I’d name my third cat Connor McCloud.
What do I call them? Pain, Squeaky, Jamesy Wames, Hanny Wan, Purrrrrrrrrrr, and Whiney.
They don’t seem to mind.
I agree with the people who say wait until you get to know the cat before you name it. I have always waited a month or so before permanently naming a cat. I currently have Bo, Abby and Hanna. I call them my Amish cat family (I don’t know if those three names are common for the Amish, but they are old-fashioned sounding names). I had given them temp names before their final names, but the names were wrong and never stuck.
This thread has been resurrected from several months ago, and I’m not sure if I ever did tell you what I named the cats. (I know you’ve all been laying awake at night wondering.) I eventually decided that people names would be nice, so I got a baby name book and looked up names that meant “brown” and names that meant “gray”. (Oh, and the cats I got were a male brown tabby and a male gray tabby.) So the boys wound up named Bruno and Lloyd. If I had known them better at the time I was choosing names for them, I would have looked for a name that meant “manipulator” and a name that meant “gets stuck in trees all the time”.
I named Snickers* Snickers because when I got her as a kitten, her calico coloring was lightish (rather pastel, almost) and Snickers colored. Really - her yellow was more nougat or peanut colored, her orange more caramely, and her black chocolate brown. So she became Snickers. She’s darker now, more normal, but too bad - she’s Snickers.
We had a Toad once - cat was supposed to be named Patchwork, but Mom started calling her Toad, and it stuck. She was a great Toad.
I used to volunteer at the Humane Society, socializing the cats, and there was a little gray kitten there that was a firecracker. Her “name” was Francesca, but that was such a load for her and didn’t fit. I christened her Amp, which was much better.
Our other cat’s name is Tosha, but she came to me that way. Mostly we call her Kitten, but there’s lots of Toshs, Toshinators, and Toshamatrons too.
Because Tosh is “festively plump,” as Mr. Snicks likes to say, he wants to name the next cat we get Pudge. But we’ll have to see if it fits.
I knew of someone who named their dog Diogee. Pronounced how you’d spell it: “d - o - g.” I always thought that was clever, and thought of naming a cat “Estiope.” Called “Esty” for short. Because what are you always yelling at cats? “Stop!” of course. Although Eno would work, too.
*Yep, that’s why I chose my handle. Damn, I love that cat.
Snicks
I like being able to give my pets “pet” names. I choose names that lend themselves to the addition of cutesy suffixes.
My female cats have gotten names ending in vowels so I can add “-linda” to the end (being the spanish word for “pretty”). My male cat names are usually short and end with a consonant so I can easily make an “-ito” (“little”) version of the name. Aside from that, I’m pretty random - I tend to look to other cultures for inspiration.
So, I currently have Misha (“Mishalinda”). and Kip (“Kipito”). Kip has also been dubbed “Kipper”. And “Mr. Whiney McMeows-a-lot” for obvious reasons.
When I found my cat at the pound, his name was Ginseng. Let me tell you, he is NOT a Ginseng. I mean, that’s not the easiest name in the world to say, first off.
When I was a kid, I had a cat named Thomas. So when I got this cat I called him Sam. My boyfriend at the time (now my husband) refused to call him Sam. Well, he didn’t refuse, he just didn’t call him that. He called the cat Puss. And believe you me, my cat is such a Puss. So it stuck. His name is The Puss. If you’re talking ABOUT him, you say The Puss. Like, “Yesterday the Puss fell asleep and started snoring.” If you’re talking TO him, you say, “Hey Puss, how can you walk with your belly dragging on the ground like that?” His vet calls him Mr. The Puss. And she swears there’s a person under all that fur. Or an alien, she’s not sure.
Well, over time the Puss got several more names. When he got hyper and ran around and tripped over his feet, he became Action Cat. He hasn’t been Action Cat in a few years. Now he’s more like Inaction Cat. The name that is hardest to explain to people is why we call him Pussbutt. People get confused and think we mean something rude by it. But we don’t. He’s just very butt-centric. He will walk up to you and put his butt on your feet. I’m always waking up with a butt in my face, too, because he loves me. He likes to show off his butt. Like, Look at my beautiful butt. It’s all fluffy.
Once Pussbutt got up on the counter and ate some corn muffins. For a few weeks he became Muffin. You could tell by the hurt look on his face that he was insulted. So we started rotating between that and Truffles, Punkin, and other super cutesy names. He hates it. He has his Puss dignity, after all.
A few years back we started calling him Mr. Pants and it stuck. He’s pants-centric, too. (I’m sure you saw that coming.)
People say cats don’t come when called but the Puss does. If you say, PUSSSSSS! he will wander in a few minutes later and pretend he was heading this way anyhow. If you’re petting him and you say psssssss! his tail will twitch. He knows his name, I’m telling you.
Over time we have had an assortment of gerbils and then anoles. They usually got TV or movie names. Like there was a big tough male anole we called BA. Although we did have a lizard named Kuma–that’s Japanese for bear. (I’m into anime too–if you didn’t guess from the screen name.)
Named my female cat Scheherazade - Cherie for short. No real reason, really.
My last cat was named Morrigan, and a gold star to whoever gets the reference. I can’t have a cat while I’m in the base dormitory, which really sucks.
We tend to go with human names in our family, except for Baby, a long-haired orange and white cat that we thought was female for the longest time. That fur covered up everything. Oh, and my sister’s bobcat is named Baxter.
Just go with whatever suits the cat.
My roommate named his cat Little Furious. She is altogether evil.
Our method is to name our cats according to their personality:
Our favorite cat ever was a Chartreux, a French breed, so we named him Napoleon.
Our other cat (now 13) was completely white with a pink nose, pink paws, and pink inner-ears when he was a kitten. At the time we had rabbits who also were completely white w/ pink inner-ears, paws, nose, etc… The cat thought the female rabbit was it’s mother, and even tried to suckle on it. It was bizarre how this kitty socialized with these rabbits. It’s why we named him “Bunn E.” (pronounced “Bunny”)
A few months ago we adopted a Korat from the Humane Society. His name was “Gizmo”, but he doesn’t meow, he makes a squeeking noise, so we nick-named him “Squeekers”.
Petra (named after one of the two female characters in Ender’s Game) got her name after we tried different names for about 3 weeks. I even had a thread here on the SDMB about it.
She was in the hallway of our floor and using myself, my boyfriend, and a neighbor to get closer to the neighbor’s cats without them seeing her. My boyfriend said “Hey, it’s Petra Dragon. The enemy’s gate is down” and she’s been Petra ever since.
We refused to call her tripod and couldn’t think of any other more fitting names for a tuxedo-colored three-legged kitty.
Of course, she is sometimes called “small and three-legged” when she’s sleeping, incredibly adorable, and we don’t want to wake her up (she wakes up if we say her name when she’s sleeping). She’s also “Little One,” though not so little anymore (and I think she’s still growing, at 9 months).
I am all about waiting to find out a cat’s personality before naming the cat. Her shelter name was “Bug.” To that, we said “Ugh.”