From: mdhangton@gmail.com   
      
   William Vetter wrote:   
   > Do you think the choice of names for animal characters in literature are more   
   > important than naming humans?   
   >   
   > For example in _Three Men in a Boat_, the characters' names are George,   
   > Jerome, Harris, and Montmorency.   
   >   
   > Another thing that I notice is that civilians generally do not name their   
   > pets the same way that authors do.   
   >   
   > There are many websites that claim to give the 10 or 20 most popular cat or   
   > dog names.  Some of them allow visitors to add names to list to increase the   
   > sampling, and this sort I feel is the most credible.  The name that's always   
   > in the top three is Charlie.   
      
   Let me try again...   
      
   Mark Twain owned cats that he named Apollonaris, Beelzebub,   
   Blatherskite, Zoroaster.   
      
   I found a website named vetmd.com that had an automated page that asked   
   viewers to add the names/gender of their cats & dogs...the sample size   
   seems to have grown to more than 30,000, so I liked this one, although   
   it seems to be down when I tried it a few days ago.  According to their   
   list, the most popular name for a female cat is Angel, and the second   
   most popular name for both male & female cats is Charlie.  Others in   
   the top ten relate to patterns of the cats' coats:  Mittens, Tiger,   
   Oreo...   
      
   So you see what I'm getting at -- writers will approach the naming the   
   same way they approach naming a fictional character, while the rest of   
   humanity likely won't.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)