How Did Your Dog Get Its Name?

In a previous topic on this forum, someone was mentioning funny dog names, and this got me to wondering why we name our dogs what we do. I know that where my dogs are concern there is some story to be told. Our larger dog OSO (yes, bear in Spanish) got his name for two reasons. First of all his breed Akita is suppose to have a the look of a bear, but I think that Oso is a mix breed of Akita and something else. Second we had hamsters at one time that we acquired from a school teacher and one of them a teddy bear hamster was name Oso. This hamster was such a character, that when we got this dog, and he turned out to be just as big a character as a puppy my sister just came out and said to him Okay little Oso, unaware that my brother was also calling him Oso, and that's where he got his name. Our second dog Buddy got his name because we had another small dog prior to him name Buddy, and it wasn't the first time that we name a dog in honor of a previous dog we had. Although given this Buddy's personality a better name would of been Bully. So that is how Oso and Buddy got their names.

 

My current dog was named by someone else. She saw him as her buddy and therefore named him Buddy. Nothing creative there.

We have had some creatives names in the past and they were normally based on personality traits that we noticed right away.

 

I think I have always liked basing their names on their personality or outstanding characteristics. But their came a point in my life that I have enjoyed choosing their names for the sake of annoying someone else particularly my mom.

She hated how I decided to call my dog "Uling" which if translated in English is called "Coal". The latter one sounded a lot better but I thought it was about time to stick to my own dialect. Our neighbors would often laugh when they hear us calling our dog "Uling".

My partner decided to name his dog "Batman" because he was black and he wanted to make fun of the dog too. He was the one who named Peanuts as well as our dog who died of Parvo who he named Twitch. She kept on twitching at sleeping time reason why she was named after it.

 

As you can guess, Homer is named after the author of The Odyssey. I'm a philologist so I like names like this because they remind me of the books that I've read . When we bought our little dog, it was just a joke though - I was joking that we should name him Homer because he had this white hair on the top of his head that made him look old and serious . I thought that my sister would say no, but instead, she said: 'why not? Homer is a great name!'

 

It was a strange coincidence, but I ended up getting a dog from the pound that looked almost identical to the dog my parents had, however that one got loose and hit by a car while my mom was in labor with me (my grandparents were watching it while they went to the hospital). It gets a little weirder too, the dog that they got was from the pound as well. My dad went in to drop off a stray he found and ended up walking out with this little coonhound puppy. They named him Dominic. So when I brought my dog home, they all insisted we name her Dominique - because they looked so much alike.

Our second dog we got from a bad home, and the kids that lived there were calling her "elizabeth" (kinda odd name for a dog imo), it somehow got abbreviated to "E.B." and stuck.

Our beagle we couldn't agree on a name for, and in the meantime were calling her "beagle", as stupid as it sounds that stuck too.

 

Thank you for the responses, as I said before its interesting to know how dogs get their names. Since I know that my own family have had reasons for what we have named our dogs over the years. I agree with the individual who said that personality can play a part because that is how Oso got his name, we actually thought for awhile of naming him Rocky in honor of the dog we had lost a few months before, but he was more of an Oso, so that became his name.