I inherited my dog, Butters, from an older lady who was getting too old to care for her dog (I told the story on another thread so won't repeat it here :)) In any case, she named the dog Butters not after Butter the food or, as some people have asked, after the South Park character (I doubt she even knew what South Park was! I actually don't watch it either so someone told me there was a Butters). No - I think she named her (my) dog Butters because it butts its little head against the swinging door to get in and out of the kitchen. Doesn't nudge it and then go - no, butt butt butt and plays with it a bit. Then goes through. The woman and I both have the same type of doors ... so Butters stays Butters 🙂

My dog's name is Hissin' Pete, like the character from the comic Paranatural. I thought it sounded hilariously old-timey and western, which fits my little tan dog with black spots.

I had it down to about three or four that I really wanted, but when it came to deciding among those it was really difficult. It might have partly been some weird kind of pressure that I was putting on myself though from some sort of childhood mess up, or maybe I am just reading too much into that again. It would not be the first time. I did decide of course, but I still have those what if moments.

Well, we do have a lot of dogs... Their names come up randomly. We just saw our little Marshie gave birth to them and we name them on the spot. We just try to find out of they are a girl or a boy and come up with a name from there. I wish there was more story to their names... But no, there really isn't. Lol.

With our other two dogs, their names are Tootsie and Graps. Tootsie is the name of our other dog who is already dead now. The newer Tootsie just resembled her so much so we named him that as well. Sadly, the newer Tootsie is also dead now, just recently. But he has lived a long life already I guess. Graps is just short for a name of a flea, from where I am. And since Graps has so many fleas when he first came to us, we named him that.

When I was younger, I used to name my dogs by their color (Blackie, Brownie) or how they looked like (Spot for my Dalmatian). LOL. I guess the young me just like to keep it simple. And anyway, those names are much easier to remember. Now, the names of our dogs at home always start with the letter "M" like Mariah, Manjo, Milo.

It was hard, because we wanted to give him a good name. It took us quite a while to give him a name. We actually changed his name a couple of times, and eventually we got a name that we're all satisfied with. "Rafa"
Since we always bring him with us to the tennis court and he likes staying there as well, we gave him the name "RAFA", derived from one of the greatest tennis player ever, Rafael Nadal. It was fitting, and everybody else in the court liked the name and we all started calling him Rafa.

We had a fairly easy time picking out our dog name. We know what we wanted, something different, something strong, and masculine. So we settled for Capone! Everyone in the house loved his name, and better yet, he responded straight away when we called him.

I have ofted helped out some friends with names for their dogs (and other pets, too), they think I'm very creative. Well, truth be told, I almost never come up with them myself, I just take inspiration from comics, movies and videogames. It's easy to think of characters who have a similar personality or appearance, and then, eventually, you'll find a fitting name. It's always been like that, since I'm not particularly fond of over-used names.

I've always found it very easy to name all of my dogs as its a bit of a family tradition to name them after football players from a team that we support!

Me and all my family are Manchester City fans, so we've had numerous dogs called Bell, Lee, Summerbee, Goater, Yaya...And many more!

Naming pets had always been fun to me, but I never do lose sleep over them to be totally honest. I do not research and do extra in naming my furry buddies. I usually just give them a look and based on what I gather at that time or what I was watching on tv, read on books or whatever-- boom! That's it, you got named! My first dog (puppy) was named by my dad. He named him Pinggoy (to this day, I still do not know where he got that but since it was easy enough to remember, the name stuck), my cousins called him Boxer. My second dog was named Sexy, my third, I named myself--Braxx (from the anime Battleball). He was a Doberman crossed with a mongrel and the last dog we had was named Chun-Li (from the Street Fighter franchise). Braxx and Chun-Li were good friends but unfortunately, they did not survive until old age because they passed on because of the flu. Sad times. They both got sick and died 3 days after the other.

Our dogs get their name by chance but with meaning. Our first dog was named Jedi because the Star Wars commercial was airing when my husband was thinking of a name for the puppy. With Epoy, we thought he was epileptic. Our third dog is named Tisoy for his white coat to mean mestizo. Next is Pipoy, the pug who looks like the comedian with the same name. And our youngest dog is Barbie, named by the vet who gave her to us. Barbie was born with a sister named Bambi.

I've never had issues naming any of my pets, except my fish. My rabbits were named after characters in Bambi, Thumper and Flower. My first dog was a yellow lab and named after one of mom's favorite singers, Blondie. And my cats were named after either obvious things like Honey and Midnight for their coats, Andrew and Anthony for the boys my mom thought she'd never have, and Tigger and Piglet after Winnie the Pooh. I've only had trouble naming my fish. I'm am something of a fish terminator and won't name a fish until it's survive three nights. Then the random names come, I've had a fish that had twenty-nine names before it died. I don't remember any of them.

Can't say I've ever had issues naming my pets. The dogs that have been part of my life were Jessica (named by my father after the Allman Brothers Song), Jack (named by my mom and I after the character Jack from the movie Hook, and recently Rufio (named after Rufio from the movie Hook, in honor of Robin Williams. As for our cats... there was our hellion cat named Wicket after the Star Wars ewok. Tina was originally Timmy the Tom (because we thought she had balls but was actually pregnant). Maurice was named after the Stever Miller band song, The Joker. The kittens Tina had were named Abigail (Abby the Tabby), Bear (because he looked like a black bear cub), Mahjong (for the M shaped lines on her body), and Devil (because she was the orneriest of the bunch). Later, there was Maximus Decimus Meridius, or Max for short. Another cat was named Niko after a character from one of my favorite books.

I need to sum this up, haha. So, lastly, I've had two gerbils named Nezumi (means 'rat' in Japanese) and Pikachu (Pokemon). And I had a hamster I named Jingles after a character from anime about, you guessed it, hamsters.

Come to think of it, books and movies and whatnot really inspired every name I've ever given an animal.

Actually is was pretty hard to find a name for my dog. After a long debated he ended up being called Luca after the song, at the same time each one of us called it a different thing, so I realized that more important than the name was the fact he could recognize our tone of voice. 🙂