It’s Ok To Name Your Dog Tumor

What you name your pet says a lot about you. When you name a child you have to think about how the other humans are going to react. Does this name rhyme with a body part? Will this name doom your child to an existence of D&D and Lovecraft? Does some horrific historical figure also have this name? We tend to stick to certain rules and conventions that keep us from naming our children after Superman’s father or our favorite virtue. But with pets we can let our true nature show. We can give them any name in the world and as long as it’s not racially offensive, no one blinks an eye. If it could only be this way with children it would be such a colorful world. The imaginative school yard taunts alone would make it worth it.

I tend to name my pets after characters in books: Fiver, Grendel, Gulliver, Finnegan, and Dinah. Eric names them after sports figures: Marvin, Peyton. No big psychological surprises here. However, one of my friends named her cat Olivia, a name she would now like to give to her future daughter. At the time she named her cat had she subconsciously given up all hope of having a daughter? Is her cat’s moniker nothing more than wishfulfilment gone wrong? Why waste such a normal (if lovely) name on a cat? I say start calling the cat Olive and lie to your daughter like mad.

Another friend has 12 cats, all of them with boring names such as Spot and Tom. However, should this friend ever have a daughter (hard to do when you own 12 cats, I admit) she plans to name her Jadzia, after a Star Trek character. Eric suggested she name her hypothetical daughter Seven of Nine and ruin the child’s life in one swoop. My friend is clearly confused. You give your child the boring name and your pets the dreamfulfilment names. I bet my friend still wishes her parents had named her Ariel or Tasha. When I was ten I wanted to be called Adora, a name that would now drive me to crime, or at least the ownership of 12 cats.

A friend whose surname in Malone named his cat Molly, turning her into a tragic Irish heroine. Now it’s unlikely his cat is going to die of a romantic, lingering fever and then haunt the apartment, but should he really have tempted fate? Yes, because that’s what you do with your pets. With a child this name would be too ill-fated, but with a pet it’s a nice conversation piece.

Another friend who resembles the character Trinity from the Matrix named her sweet, barrel shaped Labrador after this sleek heroine. It’s hard to imagine an animal who looks less like Carrie-Ann Moss, but that’s not the point. Animal names can reflect your tastes and your interests. Sometimes their names have nothing to do with them. Other times there names have everything to do with them, as with my friends whose pug is named Sandwich. You may want to, but your really need to refrain from, naming your child Potato, no matter what they look like. I, however, still hope to one day have a three legged dog named Tripod.