Aside from being a future Beatle or Gidget’s boyfriend, what is a Moondog? Why did anybody want to be called Moondog? Where did this name come from? 
It’s a type of halo seen around the moon. Someone probably picked it as a name just because it sounds cool.
How could you provide two Wikipedia links but not include one to Moondog himself? Let alone Alan Freed’s legendary early rock ‘n’ roll radio show (Moondog Matinee).
My WAG is that a moondog is someone wild, someone who howls, like a dog at the moon.
It’s a faerie creature, also.
And a supporting character in the comic strip Monty.
There’s the same kind of ice halo that can be seen around the sun, called “Sun Dogs,” which I think is a very cool phrase and would love to use as a title for something.
I believe there was an indy comic book company called that once… I don’t know if they’re still around. It was out of Tampa I think.
The Moondogs were a pro wrestling tag team that had a few different members over the years. They wrestled in Memphis, among other places. The gimmick was that they were wild, almost savage, hillbilly types. They worked in torn/ragged cutoff jeans, used rope for a belt, usually wrestled barefoot, and often used a cow bone as a foreign object with which to clobber their opponents. One member of the team, Larry Latham, passed away recently.
Also, “moondog” can refer to a lycanthrope, usually a werewolf.