Here's an article about the correlation between the most popular dog names and baby names in NYC and Britain.
While we're on the subject, why *do* some names just work well for dogs, and others don't? I remember when my sister was pregnant with her first kid, she wanted to name him "Zeke," but everyone said that was a "dog name."
Then I met a dude with a large, smelly bulldog named Sarah. That was just weird. I mean, Sarah. I know about 50,000 girls named Sarah. Would you name a dog Dave? Maybe a cat. My stepfather had 12 cats and 5 dogs when my mom met him--he had named them all after his (now ex-) in-laws. Thus I would let Emily, Judy, and... i can't remember the rest of the dogs' names out at night when I house-sat, and made sure that Dave and Tim didn't scratch the couch, while Bob and Nancy sat on my lap... We actually inherited Bob and Dave. I couldn't call them Bob and Dave; they weren't Cat-like enough for me. I tried Robert, Roberto, and finally Robert pronounced the French way. Dave was Monsieur David... I don't know why French names seem better on cats to me... Anyway, I find it really strange to call animals by the same names as people that I know.
What was the point of all this? Oh yeah, pets and people names. Maybe we should start naming children Fluffy, Whiskers and Patches to even the score. Or, since most babies aren't fluffy and don't have whiskers, Baldy, Ears and Screamer?
4 comments:
Interesting. I'd be interested in seeing an American version of a top 10 or 20 names for pets. Closest I could find was from a veterinary pet insurance company: http://www.petinsurance.com/petnames/dsp_petNames.cfm
This was one of my biggest hesitations in naming my daughter Sasha (well, 2nd biggest hesitation, first was the figure skater but that's another story). It's like people ruin a perfectly good name by giving it to their dog. I don't really get it.
Although on many occasions, I've seen people, upon regarding a name, say "Oh it's a very cute name but I wouldn't be brave enough to name a child that. Maybe for a pet name". But those are usually more unique names, not names like Bob or Dave.
No. Please no. DON'T give people ideas like naming their kids "Screamer" and the like. You may start a trend, and that would be a disaster. Call the National Guard!
I also think that foreign sounding names work better for pets is because they aren't common and we don't know any humans by that name.
I have a cousin with a dog named Dave, and I still can't get used to it. Specially since she was a roadie for the Dave Matthews band... seemed wrong for some reason.
Cindy: FWIW, My best friend in Elementary School's little sister was named Sasha. She seemed to have turned out OK... so let's cross our fingers.
The reason we have middle names is so that you have a back-up plan if your child's first name winds up being the name of an infamous clown, a terrorist or celebrity.
I wouldn't want to encourage people to use pet names because so many already do. I've seen Coco, Princess, Bijou, Tiger, Precious, Cinnamon, and even Lucky used on humans. I know dogs and cats are a lot easier to raise than human children (I'd like to see the baby who papertrained at 6 weeks) but wishful thinking aside, sometimes segregation is a good thing.
I have a friend I call Fluffy... of course, that isn't his real name, but he has fluffy hair and a friend of ours who couldn't remember his real name said something like 'hey Fluffy' back in freshman year, and the name stuck. We've tried to stick another friend with the matching nickname Scruffy, but that didn't go over as well.
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