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Is
it a Baby or an Iguana?
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| After several months of research I have determined that
it's practically impossible to avoid naming your child after
someone's pet. |
| A lot of people would be honored if you would name your
child after their pet, because they are usually thinking about
a pet who has come to some unfortunate and untimely end. |
| Their eyes mist up as they are suddenly reminded of ol'
Rexibald and that terrible day when their mother turned on
the clothes dryer without noticing that the cats had caught
Rex in one of their "sock traps" again and stuffed
him, muffled and helpless, into the tumbler. |
| So now you can't name your child Rexibald without unintentionally
honoring a dog you never knew and perhaps bringing years of
therapy down upon your child's head. Another good name out
the window. |
| "Gus? I used to have a parrot named Gus. Great bird,
a great bird. Developed avian hypersentesis, though, and eventually
we had to have him sprayed down with radioactive sludge and
buried deep within a mountain in Nevada. Poor ol' Gus." |
| Scratch Gus. |
| You might prefer not to name your child after a puppy who
was accidentally run over by the ice cream truck when your
best friend was 8 (He's still not over it), but there will
come a time in every person's life when they meet someone
who has a ferret or a boa constrictor with the same name. |
| My parents-in-law relate a story of a neighbor who had two
dogs with the same names as their children, so whenever they
would lean out the back door and yell "Katie, Molly!
Time for dinner!" two happy little pooches would show
up hungry. |
| According to BabyNames.com, the top pet names are Max for
males and, of course, Molly for females, and 10 of the top
20 names on the pet names list can also be found in the list
of the 100 most popular names for humans. |
| So to avoid naming your child after someone's pet, you have
to discard the best names, like Max, Wolf, Bear and Ernie
for boys, Daisy, Clarabelle, Princess and Socks for girls. |
| When I was a child, a pet would never keep the same name
it first arrived home with. Names were constantly evolving
until you found the right one, the one that captured the soul
of that animal perfectly. |
| We had a cat once who came into our house with the name
of Shadow. It was a gray cat, and the name was the first one
that popped into our 10-year-old minds in the car on the way
home from the animal shelter. Shadow, is incidentally, 14th
on the list of popular pet names. |
| But naming a cat Shadow is the same as naming a boy John.
When he hits high school, nobody calls him John anymore, he
gets a nickname. He's Big J, or General Jojo or Cool Master
Junga. |
| And so this cat within a few short months became Weefy.
Now there's a name you're not likely to find on any lists.
And it's not a bad name for a daughter, either, except that
it's already been used for a cat. |
| As Katie and I are going through the process of naming our
first child, we are well aware that the name we select could
be instrumental in determining whether our child is a jock
or a geek, a mathematician or an English major, popular or
a loner. |
| A girl named Socks, obviously, would have some issues. But
if you make the next best choice, Bootsie, then you're right
back to naming your child after the howler monkey your sister
had in college. |
| Katie, fearing that she may end up with a son named Octavius
or a daughter named Catapulta, has said I have no naming rights
for this child. But my biggest concern is making sure my child's
not a poodle. |
