My dog’s name is Hudson, which is a human name but more often a surname than a first name. My cat’s name was officially Wesker, though he was named for Albert Wesker, and I called him that a fair bit.
When I was a teenager, I adopted a dog who, through a circuitous route, was named “Cindy”.
A few years later, I met- and fell in love with- a girl named Cindy.
At my mother’s funeral later that year, I told my cousin that I wish Cindy could’ve been there. He said, “Um… Uh… I don’t think she really knows your mother’s gone…”
:smack:
They’re all better than what we ended up naming an old rescue poodle, once…
Actually, now that I think about it, the first name we tried to give him, “Seymour,” was pretty human-sounding. But it never stuck. Worse yet, we’d fostered a LOT of animals before him, and we’d really started running dry on good names. Worse than that, the poor guy had severe cataracts, 'couldn’t see a thing.
Now we’ve had plenty of blind dogs—ones that had gone blind from age or disease, and at least one born blind—but never one that had failed to adapt so badly to the disability as this dog had. He was a bit of a drama queen, too…so, years of stumbling into things, even in rooms where nothing ever changed position, falling off of steps, high pitched wailing when he got lost—or just wanted attention…
He was always treated well by us, and he lived out the rest of his years in happy and in good health, and my sister loved him. And my family, to this day, still feels awful about the only name that stuck (which we’d deliberately mispronounce when someone else asked about him, or we got him a prescription from the vet)…
So, here’s to you, Blindy.
I probably wouldn’t call a pet a human name, but only because I like quirky unique names generally.
Having said that, when I was younger my teddy bear was named Craig.
A friend of a friend has a dog named Kevin. This cracks me right up. Kevin, the schnauzer. I might have to steal that name when I get a dog.
My cats are Joey and Oliver. I’ve never met anyone with either of those names*, but if I did I don’t care if they would mind sharing their name with my cats. I have met some people who feel like animals shouldn’t have human names but they’ve never commented on my pets specifically, just the general trend of giving animals people names.
*It is really, really odd that I’ve never met a Joey. That seems like it should be a pretty common name, right?
We have a friend who owns a beach bar in St Martin. We’ve been friends with him for a long time, spending two weeks with him very winter. We named a dog after him. He has pictures of the dog at the bar and is proud that he has friends who gave the dog his name (Kali).
My dog is named after the former prime minister of Kosovo (where I found him), who would be mortally insulted if he knew he had a canine namesake. (He was a close acquaintance of mine and the dog reminded me of him for some reason.) But he’s Muslim and they’re not so fond of dogs.
My dad has a dog I found in Albania named Bart. There was so much confusion over his name (Whenever I mentioned him, people would ask “Who’s Bart?”) that he became known as Bart the Dog, which stuck, so he now goes by his full name. And, of course, people now ask why he’s called Bart the Dog…
ETA My younger brother had a German Shepard named Tara and my older brother has a step-daughter named Tara. She wasn’t insulted though.
My horse’s name is Bob. My friend’s horse’s name is Sammy. There is also a Hugo at our barn, along with Leah, Shelby, Dan, Teddy and Lizzie. There is also a boarder named Bob so we call him by his last initial to avoid confusion with my horse.
One of my dogs has a human name. Her name is Brandi. She’d had the name 4 years when we adopted her, so I didn’t change it. I thought it was bad enough she kept getting passed around to various people, so I didn’t want to add to her stress.
She’s a good girl, who is affectionate and loving.
TheKid’s common name is one of those on the list of popular female animal names. She hates hearing “Oh! That’s the name of my dog!” when she introduces herself.
Our oldest cat is Lucy (or Lucifer). The little girl across the street is also named Lucy. My cat twitches whenever the neighbors yell for their Lucy. Our other two are Mayme (named after my great-aunt) and Dot (short for Dorothy).
I have a friend who names her animals but then gives them a litany of ever-changing nicknames. She gets irritated when I don’t remember that “Scrappy-yappy” is actually Goliath who was briefly known as “Pooper.”
I admit that I talk to the dog all the time and I call her nicknames or swear words but I don’t expect other people to remember the stupid shit that comes out of my mouth. 
I know dogs named Molly, Minnie, Tilly, Emma, and Maggie. I have known people with all those names, but they seem like okay dog names, too.
However, at the dog park, there is a dog named Debbie. Debbie is a Weimaraner puppy and the name just doesn’t fit.
My first exposure to dog names that were people names was when my best friend and my mother’s best friend moved out of the house next door, and this lady moved in who had two annoying yappy poodles. One of them had my mother’s name and one of them had my name. Aarrgh! Not only did we lose our best friends, we had to hear the old lady yelling all the time for one or the other of us to SHUT UP. (I was 9 at the time, I didn’t take it well.)
We once named a dog Maisie, which is a person name but a really old-fashioned one. Shortly after that, one of my husband’s best friends started dating, you guessed it, a Maisie, and we saw them a lot, and sometimes things were awkward.
One of the names we’ve narrowed it down to if our baby is a girl is Molly.
My daughter’s name (even spelled the same!)
Maybe this means I really want dogs instead of kids! 
That’s my dog’s name. Most of the names I like for boy-children sound more like dogs’ names - Rufus, Bruno, Toby, etc.
My ex-wife’s dogs (who we adopted while we were still together) are named Sam and Rosie.
But as I think of those as Hobbit names, not human names, it never phased me in the slightest.
When the movie version of Marley & Me came out, I a handful of people tell me they knew somebody who had a dog named Marley. I’m not offended that people use my name for dogs, but I wasn’t sure why people were telling me about it .Why am I supposed to care that a stranger’s dog has the same name I do?
My cat’s name is Mort. But then again, I don’t run into too many humans named Mort anymore, so I think the pendulum has swung on that one.
Well this made me think back on all my pets or pets my family had when I was a lad:
Victor - Lab/Great Dane mix
Louie - miscellaneous mutt
Alfie - Airedale
Huckle - piebald tuxedo DSH cat
Veronica - German Shepard/Doberman mix
Sandy - Golden Retriever/Vizla mix
Saxon - Boxer
Hank - Chesapeake Bay Retriever
Max - black DSH cat
Maxine - orange DSH cat
unnamed ( Joyce ) - piebald grey/white DLH cat
Rupert ( Prince Rupert ) - piebald orange/white DSH cat, current
Ollie ( Oliver Cromwell ) - black DSH cat, current
The only non-standard human names are Huckle ( from Richard Scary, I named her back in 2nd grade ) and Saxon ( named before we adopted him as an adult - he had papers ). The unnamed cat was a stray that basically moved in with me without being invited and I just never named her, though she lived with me for a few years - my mother used to refer to her as “Joyce”. The first two are before my conscious memory, the third almost is. The last four were owned by me as an independent adult ( Maxine spanned 17 years and reached back to my late teens ).
So I guess my family has always given human names to their pets. I see nothing particularly unusual about it. A name is just a name.
Our beloved pet, a Belgian Tervuren whose name was Yorick, died of heartworm disease we thought we’d eradicated. I was going to take him for his walk one evening and went to get his leash. When he saw that, he jumped up with happiness as he always did, but when his feet hit the floor, he was dead. The worms had burst his heart.
“Alas, poor Yorick”, right?
We also had a cat we named The Great Catsby (or “Catsby” for short). He gave us 13 years of happiness before we sent him over the “Rainbow Bridge”. His arthritis was so bad, he was constantly crying and so were we, because nothing we could do would help.
I told you that so that you’d know: we don’t name our pets just anything. Once they have that name, it means something (to us, if not to them:)), and they become a part of the family with that name.
“Bertolt Craig”: Many times we’ve had company, and they commented, “He looks like a Bert”, and that’s enough for us. Our baby’s been recognized by name. 
Q