How To Name Your Bovine

Naming animals is a very personal thing; it says something about the critter, but more importantly it says something about you. Many an animal has been stuck with an unfortunate name, because its owner was too self-absorbed to think rationally.

I offer myself as an example: We were bringing home our new puppy, who was unspeakably clumsy, as puppies tend to be. He hit the ground so many times that I decided a good name for him would be “Thud.” I thought this was wildly funny and creative, and I could envision myself being showered with admiration and praise every time I explained how little Thud got his name.

Fortunately, cooler heads—and by cooler heads, I mean my wife Beth—prevailed, and this earnest yet goofy pup was given the more appropriate, Mayberryesque name of Opie.

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Being Clever with Cats and Kids

One might assume that it is easier to name an animal than a human child, but this is not true. Child-naming has parameters. Yes, people push the boundaries at times; when I was a boy, the Swisher family decided to name their baby girl Heavenly. The girl was smart, and every grading period we would greedily read the Honor Roll in the weekly newspaper and break into wild peals of laughter when we read of the accomplishments of young Heavenly Swisher.

But beyond that, human names do not enter the realm of the inanimate or abstract. You would not name a child Five Ball, as I once did with an orange cat. Unfortunately there are not that many billiards fans in the world and so my cleverness was lost on the masses.

A Pig with a Porn Name?

It is not without reason that your “porn-star name” (a whimsical determination of the stage name you would adopt if you were in X-rated movies, such as “Scraps Firefly,” or “Daisy Sunset) is the name of your first pet coupled with the street you grew up on—in my case Smokey Kingwood. (I use Kingwood because it is the first named street I ever lived on; I grew up in the country, and my porn name really didn’t work as Smokey Rural Route 2.)

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But porn names are goofy names, names that are naturally associated with pets. My dad, in fact, insisted that we not give our animals human names because he felt that this subtracted from the dignity of any person of the same name. I have since learned that the opposite is more likely to be true.

Go Ancient

Sometimes I have had luck combining an animal name with a human name. Our first two beef cows were named Cleopatra and—wait for it—Heifertiti. The down side was that this pretty much exhausted my knowledge of ancient females, and it is impractical to get an Egyptologist on the phone every time you want to name a calf.

A Name to Fit the Fur

So the animals you will read about in “Creature Features” represents an eclectic mix. Beth is more prone to human names, such as Hannah (bulldog), Eddie (goat) and Nelson (donkey). Magellan (pig) was so named because as a piglet he liked to go exploring. Heidi (naturally) is a milk goat. Her sister Hillary was a natural born climber (it has nothing to do with the stateswoman of the same name).

When we bought some Gloucestershire Old Spots, we decided this English breed of pig needed English-sounding names—hence Chester and Tillie. Howard Cosell once said he named his pet lizard Roscoe because “What name would have been possible other than Roscoe?” I kind of felt the same way about a goat we named Alvin.

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Most people, I believe, are far better animal namers than me. I hear names such as Higgins (dog), Tripod (three-legged cat) and Captain Beefheart (I forget the animal, I just remember the name) and wonder why I can’t be as creative.

Fortunately the animals never complain, even if they have justification.

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