Thinking of names

Oddly enough, "puppy" has become a daily ingredient of my conversations. People ask what I'm going to name her. I researched female artists, writers, and scientists. It's an unfair world, in which you can find loads of famous male names that will suit dogs--Matisse, Monet, Puccini, Yeats, Keats, Jeeves--but few female.

My son researched female pirates and came up with names like Elise Eskilsdotter and P'en Ch'ih Ch'iko', not to mention Sadie the Goat and Charlotte Badger. Interestingly, Sadie was named The Goat due to her habit of head-butting her victims, making hers an appropriate name for Airedales who are known to have inch-thick skulls and ramming crests.

I looked for something distinctive, yet appropriate, and without too many syllables. I imagined myself yelling, "CallioPEE" (Greek muse of epic poetry) out the back door. Perhaps too pretentious. By the way, I read that Calliope (cal-i-o-pee) is the daughter of Mnemosyne (nem-ah-sen-ee, I think), a name that makes Calliope look simple.

Or we can go with a major Canadian artist, Emily Carr, who happened to live in the Pacific Northwest. You have not seen a tree until you've seen one of her paintings.

There's Georgia, of course, for Georgia O'Keeffe, appropriate because the sire is George. Mom is Gypsy.

Or the French author Collette, whose worked in music halls before becoming a popular author. Her best-known work is Gigi, which was made into a Broadway musical and a movie. I'm not particularly interested in her writing, but her name and slightly scandalous character could work.

Other than Harper Lee, Flannery O'Connor and Zora Neal Hurston, I couldn't think of other female writers with distinctive names.  All three were born in the southern USA.

I have a hunch that Emily might stick. It has tradition. My first Airedale, the breed my late husband and I chose because it was one on which we both agreed, was named Emma. The name was less popular in those days but well-known among English majors. Jane Austen's Emma is a character who is deeply loved.

My brain hurts.


This is post #555.