I recently adopted a pup and choosing her name was one of the final decisions I made, after puppy-proofing the yard, and buying supplies.
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Colours, characters, movies, actors, an ensemble of various letters that is basically just a sound. Something that rhymes, a characteristic, a human name.
I asked various people, some with pets and some without, and while there were a few raised eyebrows at some suggestions, and some I can’t repeat.
There was also some good advice. Imagine standing in a crowded place and having to yell out that name at the top of your lungs for the next 15 or so years. And some advice on how to not name the puppy.
Don’t name her anything that could be deemed as derogatory, nor anything that could be mispronounced and could then become a slur.
Other expert advice is not to name your dog something that could be mistaken for a command. Not that I was going to call her Lit or Bit.
There were a few odd suggestions: Keglette; or Snoogles, I think because she sleeps a lot.
And a friend of mine who also considered a recent puppy addition said we could call one Hakuna and the other Matata.
Mocha, Latte, and Jaffa.
Or give her four names, like a Royal, and end it with ‘the first’, like Eliza Benedict Rembrant the first, and start a lineage.
I trolled the internet searching for inspiration and the top 10 dog names of 2018 (yes, that is actually a thing) had one stand-out worth mentioning, Schooner.
If you were wondering, the top three in this list were Bella, Coco and Charlie.
The recommendation is two syllables and a sing-song or vowel sound at the end.
My seven-year-old nephew requested that I call her Beryl or Barbara, or anything from the early 20th century.
I didn’t ask my niece, who has had issues in the past with changing her dolls’ names every five minutes.
In the three days that my pup’s been at home, she's endured one name change, and still exists on the vet register only as ‘Pup’.
She’s since received a name, and it is after a character, and it’s an inside joke about how she ended up living with me. It’s Ella, after Eliza Doolittle.
– CLARE McCABE
- Editor’s note: And we love her, lil’ newshound!