What’s in a (Dog) Name?

Last week, I received a fun little email from my friends at Bark Box about the current trend in naming dogs. According to this infographic from Fatherly.com, humans are giving their four-legged “children” names that are also quite popular for two-legged children.

As you know, my humans named me after Harper Lee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of To Kill and Mockingbird. My humans tend to make dog name selections long before the dog actually comes into their lives. That was the case with me, and that will be the case with my little sister . . . when she finally comes to live with us . . . one day . . . after my humans find her. Her name will be Tallulah, after the American stage and screen actress Tallulah Bankhead. So clearly, with Harper Lee and Tallulah my humans are on trend with the suitable-for-human-children dog names. Which made me wonder about all the dogs who came before me in my human’s lives.

 

This is my late canine sister Lexi. (You can click here to read more about Lexi’s life.) My humans adopted Lexi from the animal shelter when they lived in Galveston, Texas. Lexi’s shelter surrender papers listed her name as Alexis, but after she was adopted she completely refused to respond to Alexis. Apparently she preferred to be called Lexi in her new life . . . and Lexi she was. So that’s Lexi, Harper Lee, and (one day) Tallulah. Yep, all of those would work for two-legged children. Let’s go back a little further.

This is Talbot, the Golden Retriever who preceded me. Here she’s pictured on a very unusual snowy Christmas day on what was usually a quite tropical Galveston Island off the coast of Texas. She’s probably focused on the snowman’s carrot nose. Talbot loved carrots. My humans selected Talbot’s name about a year before they actually selected Talbot and–you might have guessed this already–she was named after Talbots, the ladies’ clothing store. Talbot is listed on several baby name websites, but it’s not considered to be a very popular name, perhaps because of its meaning: messenger of destruction. My human mommy would like to point out that Talbot was in no way a messenger of destruction.

And finally, this is Sheffield. Before my human mommy found my human daddy, she found Sheffield at the animal shelter in Houston. My mommy wanted to get a Boxer puppy and she wanted to name him Boris after the tennis player Boris Becker. But then she started thinking about all the shelter dogs who needed loving homes, and that’s when she met Sheffield. Mommy thinks she found Sheffield’s name in an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, but that was quite some time ago and her memory is a bit foggy. It’s probably safe to say that there are not too many parents currently naming their human children Sheffield.

 

So now I want to hear about your name. (If you’re a dog, you can answer these questions on your own, or you can have your human help you. And to all of my non-canine animal friends, please feel free to play along.) What’s your name, and is it on the list of Top 10 dog names? How did you get your name? I’m curious to hear all of your naming stories!

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