The Naming of Cats

[shewhomust]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single writer of no fortune whatsoever must be in want of a cat. Which is how it came about that Chaz, as he explains in his blog, has cut short his period of mourning and entered the service of a cat whose only fault is that, having been found on Barry Street, he has been named Barry. There are worse names, but there are probably better ones, too, names that will not provoke references to Chaz'n'Baz, so yesterday an e-mail was circulated, announcing Barry's arrival (strictly on a probationary basis) and asking for suggestions.

fjm was in first, with the elegant solution "Barishnikov!"

Gail-Nina, whose theory it is that all cats are really named Beanbag or Git, made an exception, and offered :
Artichoke
Spam
Young Hastings
Bertoldo
Bramble
Cat-Face
Loki
Pyewacket
Ortolan
Specimen
Powers and Dominions
Jerome
The Penguin
and Botticelli, of which my favourite is Ortolan.

Someone who shall be nameless faked up Barry's e-mail to complain:

I'm hurt. Admittedly, Barry wouldn't have been my first choice of name, but I've grown used to it, and it drives me almost as wild as catnip when people roll their rrrrrrs (you'll need to practise). In Scots dialect, 'barry' means 'splendid' so you'll soon find that I'm aptly named. I know you don't mean to hurt my felines - feelings - and I'm sure you'd choose a suitable literary alternative, but Barry Brenchley has a certain post-modern ring to it, n'est-ce pas?

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, it isn't just one of your holiday games; (there's an edition of Old Possum with Edward Gorey illustrations; this is both utterly wonderful and completely wrong, because, of course, Nicolas Bentley drew the pictures). Given this embarrassment of riches, it's just as well that a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES. These are currently Bartholomew Bastable Basildon-Bond, though Chaz threatens to go all Chinese, and just call him Number One Son until he's at least two years old...

ETA: Val McDermid writes from Australia to point out that Barry Brenchley sounds like a damn fine name for a (web)surfer. Plus, it has a crime connection - the Barrys are the awards given on behalf of the readers of Deadly Pleasures magazine. It may not be exotic, she concludes, but it does have a certain ring to it.

Comments

[janni.livejournal.com]

We tried to give our young cat a respectable name, perhaps from a Greek or Hittite king, but none of those lovely names would stick to him. The only name that did stick was Mogget, even though he looks nothing like the (sort of) demon-cat for which he is named. He's been trying to live up to the name in other ways, instead, though.

As for the old cat ... the danger of having an old cat is that you can wind up spend years with a cat named for one of your childhood fanfic characters. Though I like to think maybe Tia is just short for Tiamat, and I just didn't realize it yet in my early 20s ...