From: djheydt@kithrup.com   
      
   In article ,   
   William Vetter   wrote:   
   >Dorothy J Heydt wrote:   
   >> In article ,   
   >> William Vetter   wrote:   
   >>> 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.   
   >>   
   >> Sounds to me more like, writers have a larger vocabulary (and   
   >> aren't afraid to use it) than the average Joe.   
   >   
   >Mark Twain was forcing the children around him to learn difficult   
   >words.   
   >   
   >I brought home a kitten a bit more than 3 years ago, and it took me 5   
   >weeks to name her.  My thinking is that a cat's name should be powerful   
   >to humans, but shorten to a diminutive the cat can conceivable answer   
   >to.  I went through 21 pages on vetmd.com and it seems to be unique.   
      
   Cf. Eliot, "The Naming of Cats," in which he claims every cat has   
   three names: one for formal occasions, one for everyday use, and   
   the cat's True Name which nobody else knows.   
   >   
   >Last month I wrote a manuscript with a Native Alaskan POV character.  I   
   >spent half a day of research to create a last name Aniruk, meaning   
   >"revived from the dead by a spellcaster" in the Inupiat language and   
   >their Eskimo religion (a spellcaster is a super-shaman, apparently).   
   >It won't get published, I think, and if it did, nobody would ever   
   >recognize it.  That is how I approach naming.   
      
   You never know.   
      
   --   
   Dorothy J. Heydt   
   Vallejo, California   
   djheydt at gmail dot com   
   Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the gmail edress.   
   Kithrup's all spammy and hotmail's been hacked.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)