We agreed to foster a dog while her former owner found her a new home, but the old owner wasn't looking very hard, and she grows on you, and <excuse> <excuse>...

So, we're keeping her. We have a new dog to keep Cypher company.

The trouble is, her name is Bella. This is bullshit; half of all female dogs are named Bella, and I don't like it, and my opinion pales in strength next to the indignant fury of my fiancee. So, new name.

Picture is at the bottom of the post. Admins, please forgive me if it breaks size boundaries; I don't know what those are, so I have specified none in the hopes that the default is an autosize or something. Resize at will.

Help me name my dog! Ideas need to fit the following limits:

- If you can name four other animals in your entire life who have had that name, I guarantee you Chelsea personally knows an animal named that. She's a dog groomer, she sees everyone's pets and knows all their names, and she insists on something uncommon, if not unique.

- Nothing I can't shout in a crowded dog park. (I'm actually going to shout an abrreviated, shortened version in the dog park.)

- Ideally, something that can be shortened to two syllables if it's not there already.

If I use your name, I will ship you 4000 MSP to use with your Xbox. If you don't own an Xbox, you can give them away or sell them as long as you haven't redeemed the code yet.

Here's my girl sleeping at Thanksgiving:



...and here she is awake in the car (on the right -- the one on the left is Cypher, my 50 lb. Australian Cattle Dog).

I don't have an X-Box but some suggestions:

Kind of going through German girl names, as your dog looks like a German Shepard.

Aubrey - noble; bear-like
Delana - protector
Elda - she who battles

maybe a starting point..

Manja. Croatian word for "light", but has a number of regional colloquial meanings, like "brilliant" or "cutie", etc.

It's pronounced "M-ah-n-yah (yuh)"

Part German Shepherd. She's very mixed.

Her sire's parents were both mixes with no breeds in common. Her dam's parents were purebred, but not the same breed (one of those was a German Shepherd, the other was an Australian Cattle Dog). So she's a mix of at least six breeds. I wish we could reliably get dogs like her, but there's no evidence that mixing the same breeds again would result in anything like this.

I think she looks like a Doberman, but there's not a drop of that in her.

Name her something that you don't have to explain every time you tell people what her name is. She's a dog, not a WoW character.

My plug would be Vanhunzer Crotchenhogger

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
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You name your butt plug?

Why the fuck would anyone give a shit? Almost no one ever asks what a WoW char's name means, and it's pretty the same for a dog. ;P

Not true. My old dog was a Pug and was named Milamber (after Pug from The Riftwar books). I thought it was a clever play on words. But every time I told someone his name, I had to explain the whole "he's a Pug named Pug" reasoning. In the end, we just called him Bob.

Or you could have said why is XXXXXXX your name?..

When people hear Cypher's name, 2/3 ask if I'm in IT or cryptography. The remaining third think it's a Matrix reference. The truth is weirder: His whole line, including his parents and their four litters, were all named after X-Men characters until sold. We bought Cypher before he was born, so we got to pick the name he went by until he could leave the nest, so there was never any need to change it.

But we never explain all that, because people invariably prefer what they think they've worked out for themselves. Explaining it just disappoints them.

<Edit: All dogs are actually surnamed Crotchenhogger. >

Psylocke

My nominees:

• Grandpa (which is, unquestionably, a top-notch candidate for dog-park-shouting)
• Polaris (continuing the tend of misleading-and-are-in-fact-X-Men-references names; also, abbreviates to "Pola" which has a nice ring)
• Surly (so introductions can always start "What did you say? Shirley?" "No. Surly." "...Huh?"; during the confusion, Surly has made off with their wallet)
• Fetid bile drinker (You can choose which noun the adjective modifies)
• Roxy

And for the record, I've yet to meet anything named Bella - dog or otherwise - despite how strongly I identify with the girl from Twilight.

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With those ears, and her "brother" being Cypher, I'd be tempted to call her Radar, shortening her dogpark call to Ray.

Our house dog (German Shepherd) at the frat was Janey but her real name was Mary Jane Rottencrotch. I thought that was a fitting last name...

Other suggestions:
Angie
Zuri

Fus Ro Dog!

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Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

I see what you did there.

_________________
"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

Hrmm, could also go the Egyptian god route. Isis for the win! Used to name my ferrets after Egyptian gods

If you wanted to play on the Crypto thing, you could call her Enigma, after the WW II German thingy.

Chelsea went with Kalioppe, and I didn't wanna talk about it anymore, so I get to call her Kali at dog parks. The Halloween costume practically designs itself.