From: mdhangton@gmail.com   
      
   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.   
      
   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.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)