From: mdhangton@gmail.com   
      
   Dorothy J Heydt wrote:   
   > 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.   
      
   Oh, I think they recognize one another by scent.  That's how the mother   
   recognizes a kitten from her nest, and why it works when animal   
   shelters stick motherless kittens in with one who's recently given   
   birth.   
   >>   
   >> 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.   
      
   I will tell you something else.  _The Writer's Digest Character Naming   
   Sourcebook_ is absolutely useless for anything that isn't European.  In   
   a first draft, I took "Higalik" from there, and later I found out that   
   name only exists for a subtribe of Inuit on one island in Canada. That   
   was when I started downloading BIA dictionaries compiled during the   
   Fifties.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)