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<p>My name was supposed to be Suzanne, but right before I was born, my eccentric great-aunt named her new puppy Suzanne. No way was my mom going to have nutty Aunt Esther tell people that her new grand-niece was named after her poodle. </p>
<p>Fun stories!<br>
My grandparents named my uncle after my grandfather’s favorite dog. My grandma always said that if he loved his child as much as he loved that dog she would be happy. He did. :-)<br>
H and I met a woman on a walk recently. She had adopted a rescue pup from Chicago. His name is Wrigley. </p>
<p>@College4K we did something similar. One liter of rescued pups had 7 in them and we named them after the 7 dwarfs. (They all managed to get adopted- even grumpy!) To this day, I kind of wonder if any of them lived up to their briefly given names. </p>
<p>This is a fun thread! When we lived in New Orleans, friends had cats named Jezebel and Miss Purr. Our current boys are two cats named Smudge and Oreo. Can you tell the 10 and 12 year olds in the family named them?</p>
<p>Like nottelling , I won’t reveal current pet’s names because sometimes I use them in passwords , combines with former pets</p>
<p>hrh, LOTS of Wrigleys here in Chicago!
I tend to favor what Garrison Keillor used to call “bachelor farmer” names for my dogs: Howard. Leonard. Norman. Chester. Floyd. If I ever had cats (which I don’t), I could see myself going a British bachelor route: Chauncey. Basil. Godfrey. I tend to get males, otherwise I don’t know what I would do. We had one beautiful female Bernese mountain dog when the girls were small and named her “by committee.” It was a pretty bland name.
Howard, the yellow lab, came from friends who had a one-time litter from their beautiful lab Indy Anna (both IU grads.) They, like my husband, travel a lot for work, and pre-nick-named all the pups as hotels: Ritz, Marriott, HIlton, etc. Our dog, the fattest, was HoJo. We shortened it to Howie when he was a pup, but as the years went on, he was always Howard.<br>
Currently, we have a rescue that came with one of the worst shelter names I have ever heard: Bow Bow Paws. They called him Bo, but still. We changed that to Dexter. We weren’t really fans of the show, just liked the name. When D’s boyfriend, a HUGE fan of the show first met him and saw a bunny toy he had destroyed, he asked him, “Dexter . . . was that a BAD bunny?”</p>
<p>Our cat has seven toes on each front foot so he is…Seven.</p>
<p>Our lab is Willow. My parents used to have a beagle named Spam.</p>
<p>When D was in 1st grade, we were playing Madlibs, and I asked for a nonsense word. She thought for a minute, and then crowed, “Milipio!” We both thought that was so hilarious that we remembered it. Two years later, when a new kitty came into our lives, that became his name. His nickname is Mippy; she came up with that as well.</p>
<p>We named the pup after my MIL.
MIL was fine with that. It was one of those ‘a female in every generation gets it’ names, going way back. (And D1’s middle name.) MIL never felt it matched her. So she went by her middle name. But the dog got a dog-sounding variant of that, too. Everyone was happy. Best dog ever.</p>
<p>We’ve owned a couple of dachshunds. One named Beemer and a wirehaired dachshund named Brillo. The kids didn’t make the Brillo connection for years.</p>
<p>A friend had a dog I mistakenly thought was named Graoul (growl and Raoul.) Struck me as clever. </p>
<p>I caught a lot of heck from my kids when I named my cat gray-striped tabby Mittens after my other cat Mittens died. I just love that name for a cat. My younger son found a kitten online at a rescue in another state that looked EXACTLY like my dearly departed Mittens. We quickly went and got him. </p>
<p>Their personalities are slightly different (but both are lovers), and kitten Mittens grew up to look exactly like Mittens #1. This may sound a bit sick, but the whole thing softened the loss a lot (although we still tear up when we think about Mittens #1’s last days.)</p>
<p>This Mittens is now 4 years old. When he crosses Rainbow Bridge, I don’t know if I can reuse that name again.</p>
<p>(I don’t reuse dog names, though…just can’t do that.)</p>
<p>My foster dog is named Rudolph. He was a Christmas puppy. (I call him Rudy.)</p>
<p>My sister named pets - mainly cats after breakfast foods for a while: Muffin, Biscuit (a dog), Waffle, Poptart. Later she (a high school English teacher) switched to ones like Hamlet, Macbeth. Then her college-aged son returned home with Pig and Pouncer. Hamlet and Pig became fast friends but there seemed such a disparity in their names. </p>
<p>My DS and DIL named their kittens Stinky and Pig. I fear for my grand babies’ names.</p>
<p>mom2collegekids, I recycled the name of my childhood cat and named our first calico after her. When Ms Kitty died, we got a calico kitten who instantly got the name! </p>
<p>My first pet as a child was Winnie the 4th. The first 3 Winnie’s were my my mom’s dogs when she was a growing up. </p>
<p>When D was in elementary school, first kitty was Purr. Crayfish (stupid, stinky school project where everyone got a crawfish) was named…Fluffy!!! </p>
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<p>I don’t like names that demean animals. Call me curmudgeon. </p>