I found Pliny frozen in my garage at like maybe 2 weeks old. (Door had blown open somehow) Thought he was dead until he moved his eye right as I was tossing him in a trash can. Had to bottle feed him and he was super sick, so I didn’t think he’d make it. Didn’t name him, just called him Tiny. Once he recovered and it was clear that he owned me, I started calling him Pliny because it sounded kind of like Tiny and was a beer that I really enjoyed at the time. He’s still super small 12 years later, so I think he was left behind because he was the runt. Or being frozen stunted his growth.

Taco Bob is named Taco Bob because we were drunk.

My rat’s name is Finnegan after the dog puppet from Mr. Dressup.

Like many things about my cat’s past, I have no idea why she’s called Izzy. I didn’t name her and the person who did has passed away.

When he was a tiny stray kitten, he ran under a shed to hide from me. He thought he was safe but his back feet were still sticking out. I grabbed him by his toes and now his name is Toes.

I couldn’t think of a name for her when she was a kitten so I just called her Kitty as a placeholder. Then, that became her name. My Kitty.

I had a dog for 20 years. We called him Git, because when we tried to chase him off he would just come to us instead. He was the best stray mutt a kid could ask for.

And what happens to be the story behind your mother’s maiden name?

I wonder if this makes sense to anybody else? We have a black and white, German Wirehaired Pointer. His full name is: Spruce Creek Livewire Ace of Spades. We call him Lemmy.

Richard Scarry/Busytown fans. Wife got a cat during COVID and named her Sally Cat.

We don’t have pets but our neighbour has two cats and they are the bane of my existence. Yowling at the door even though we’ve never fed the little bastards, and scaring the birds away as they like to shake the branches of our tree.

As a result, we call the grey one “that little shit”, and the dotted one “that little cunt”. The names have stuck in our household, and we have to watch ourselves when we trade pleasantries with the neighbours.

This is an amazing thread to collect answers to people’s security questions, thanks!

I’ve got two for a pair of cats we adopted at the same time.

First was Stusy (pronounced stu-c). He was named after a typo. My partner and I were planning a move and I accidentally misspelled study. We looked at it and decided it was a good cat name, which it was. He was the smartest cat we ever had. He died a couple years ago too young from what the vet said was likely genetic kidney problems.

His brother, our scaredy cat, is Big O. At the cattery (our name for the local cat adoption place), he was the one that wanted nothing to do with us and so we clearly had to adopt him. Every time we pet him he vigorously cleaned that spot. I don’t remember what we were going to name him. The cattery named him Big O after the tire place where he was found. He was driven from one small town in Indiana to another, about 50 miles, before he was found in the engine compartment of someone’s car who stopped at Big O to check the meowing from the engine. He was Stusy’s best friend and while he’s still easy to startle, he lets us pet him in controlled conditions (usually us lying down and holding very still) and is the goofiest of his siblings when they’re playing.

We have two guinea pigs.

Very often, guinea pigs are named after food. Our two rescues came with food names. However, everything eats guinea pigs and I feel it’s wrong to name them after food. We changed their names.

We named them after two characters from Downton Abbey: Daisy and Rose. Plants are the only living things that fear guinea pigs, so they are nice, powerful names for them.

Daisy in the background, Rose in front.

My partner named our cat Lana because he wanted to be able to scream “LAANAAA!” like Archer