Poll: How do you name your pets?

[TehCookie]

Depends, my inside cats are all named after fictional characters, and my outside cats are all variations of the same names their grandparents were given. Any kitten that got the tabby and white fur is called Mort. It started with He who could not be named, since we wanted to give him away but no one wanted him so we changed it to Voldermort. Then Mini Mort, Micro Mort, and Nano Mort in order of birth. All calicos are some sort of variation of fuck so there Frack Friell (from Farscape) and Friggen. Also any large dark tabby is Hitler, and Baby Hitler.

Yes I have a lot of cats and I don't feel like being creative with them all.

 

[AvsJoe]

I have only named one pet in my life: my recently-departed black lab Shady. I'm sure you can guess that she is named after a characteristic.

 

[RandomWords]

Mainly Physical Characteristics-
Blue-ish dog we named Blue
Female dog named Lady
Indigo colored rodent named Indigo
Black and white rodent named Oreo
Back of rodent look like numbers on a pair of dice named Dicey
Squeaked a lot named Squeakers
Bird named Poco...that one didn't quite fit
etc

 

[SimuLord]

I'm thinking of getting more rats---and if I do (getting them in pairs lets them bond with each other---they're social creatures) I'm trying to decide what to name them:

- Asterix and Obelix
- Murph and Sully
- Yersinia and Pestis
- Joe and Teddy (cookie for the reference, forumites)
- Grant and Tory

 

[Cazza]

I wanted something uncommon but not to uncommon. So the family landed on Lili. So thats my my dog was named.

 

[Marter]

My rabbit has spots. Therefore, at the age of 9, I named him "Spoddy".

 

[freedomweasel]

I had a rabbit when I was 6 or something I named her Boony. I'm not sure if that's how you'd spell it, but it's basically bunny, just pronounced wrong...
Thankfully I'm not 6 anymore so my dog is not named doog

 

[Madara XIII]

Mainly through something the animal did to help me remember them better.

Like Twitchy or Thumper

 

[FalloutJack]

I use words.

...

However, when I'm not making terrible puns, I (and my family) use terms that seem to fit or at least sound good.

Two-Bits - Orange calico, very lazy/grumpy at times
Cassie - Supposedly a gray tabby, but she went all blotchy and lost her stripes.
Inky - Black-and-white calico that looked like she was ink-blotched
Jenny (Many Stripes) - Bad pun off of Cats. She was a gray-striped tabby.
Kit - The black Bombay cat. AKA, the Kit Kat and possibly a reference to Knight Rider.

 

[Audemas]

My family and I voted on naming our dog Shakespeare. When I get my own dog it'll be a Beagle and I'll name him Poe after Edgar Allen Poe. And I'll most likely get some kind of Husky breed and name him Frost after Robert Frost.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

It depends. Of the pets I've had which I actually had occasion to name I usually pick literary references. Most of the other names just sorta happened.

I adopted my Dog so she came with the name Daisy.

I have a pet corn snake that we just named "Stinky" because it's just what I kept calling him whenever he'd slither away from me during feeding time.

My pet rat was named Lunch because I meant to feed her to the snake, but shedding season makes him lose his appetite and he never got to eat her. Now I just call her Chubsy Ubsy. Which could be a direct reference to the character from "The Little Rascals" but it isn't. I just have a morbidly obese rat.

I had two ferrets when I was a kid named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern after the characters in Hamlet.

I also had a pet rabbit named Lennie after the character from "Of Mice and Men" (This was never as funny to anyone else as it was to me).

 

[Palademon]

My naming method of animals shall be the same as my children. Random gaming references.

 

[Count Igor]

Streaks, as my rabbit both has streaks of brown fur along his back, and also he can shoot across the garden faster than you can follow.
Tufty, a Guinea(?) pig, as he had a small, rather odd, tuft of hair on his forehead.
Guiness(?) Another G. Pig. Hey, I was young at the time.
And Alby.
Short for Demon Albino.
Surprisingly, I used that full name whenever I was annoyed at him. (G. Pig)

So far my rabbit has outlived all 3 Guinea pigs, and I got Alby/Tufty about 3-4 years after Streaks.

 

[onewheeled]

I have two pets: Puppy, a cat, and Edith, an African Grey Parrot.

Puppy got his name when we brought him home, and my sister mistakenly left a hair tie lying on the ground. The unnamed cat trotted up to it, looked at me, and meowed. I threw it, he chased it, I sat on the couch. Next thing I knew, he was sitting at my feet with the hair tie, a cat playing fetch. My family thought that was hysterical, and since that's just not a thing cats do, we called him Puppy.

Edith, we didn't name. We're her third owner, the first being an old woman. So an old woman gave the bird an old person name.

 

[NinjaRabies]

I haven't named many pets yet, but when I do name an animal I either go for characteristics or some obsucre references. For example: Our turtle, a yellow belly slider, got the name Billy-Bob, because he's american and I was in a silly mood and primarely said it as a joke, but it stuck.

And when I'm a little older, working full time and probably as lonely as ever. I plan to get a dog of the larger type and call it Puppy, if only to see the look on people's faces when he's all grown up and I'm shouting "PUPPY! GET OVER HERE!" to call for a say, Irish Wolfhound?

 

[Sazzlysarah]

My first pet was hamster, and I called it sugar-lump because it was white, my sister had two, one called Fred and the other Pip. Then I had two goldfish, one I called Goldie (which turned white) and the other I called Sid, my sister called her two Anna and Hayley. Then she got two rabbits she named Flopsie and Tipsy. As a family, we got a cat and a dog called Macavity and Biscuit respectively. We then acquired a great many more fish, goldfish, koi, and a ghost koi. The ghost Koi is Casper, our two giant koi we got from family friends, and they were named after their old owners, Jim and Barry, together with a red white and blue koi we called Frenchie. When our dog died, we got a new puppy and called it Dolly after Dolly Parton (her mum was Ruby after Ruby Wax). So pet naming for me has been a random affair. No real pattern, but that might change as I grow older. I always want to keep pets!