Fuzzbot Wingfield

t.gracchus @1 – I take the dog is male.

If the dog is very white, why not call it gop?

I want to call our next dog Vijay. It’s short for Vile Jelly.

Sputnik …. that would make the Russian connection to the breed.

Idéfix?

Out, damned spot! Out, I say!

[But please, not Bubbles!]

One last thought, probably impractical because of pronouncability: Knyaz – Russian for Prince? :)

Bo

Ah. Back when I was quite young (5-6) we wound up taking care of a white Samoyed (I think, he was all white either way). One night after we home, my step-dad unlocked the door and Bo came piling through. My step-dad step aside, and since Bo standing on his back legs was taller than I was, tackled me and tried to eat my face. Because he was like that and he’d been left at home all night. I still have a very small (because I was child-sized) scar on the side of my nose close to one eye. So. I vote no. (Also, Bo: Dukes of Hazzard.)

Bosco (two ticks.)

“Bosco, Bosco, why’d you burn down the house? And Bosco said, ‘The house was laughing at me.’ No, nonono, Bosco, the house wasn’t laughing at you, it was laughing with you.”

OTOH, maybe ‘Boskone’.

Max (dull name I threw as a sop to E. Now he counters EVERY suggestion with ‘how about Max?’)

Please, dear God, no. Every dog in the world appears to be named Max at this point, and this is beginning to get on max’s nerves.

Jaffa (city or biscuit)

Emmenthal. Gouda. Brie. Cheesy enough?

Hobbes (after the cartoon character, not the political philosopher)

OK, now we’re getting serious. Calvin! Milo (the cartoon character). Hodge-Podge.

Akbar (after Life in Hell but also the Mughal prince). Which my brain naturally follows to Saladin. But if we’re doing Ajax references, how about Argos?

Or you could try Hachikō. Even if Hachikō was an Akita.

max
[‘Enough.’]

““Bosco, Bosco, why’d you burn down the house? And Bosco said, ‘The house was laughing at me.’ No, nonono, Bosco, the house wasn’t laughing at you, it was laughing with you.”

That reminds me of a friend of a friend from back in the day who was (nick) named after the terrifying, red haired, Irish TV puppet Bosco because ‘you’d never know where he’d pop up.’
Which doesnt really make any sense, retrospectively.

Chew Toy?

Cuddles?

Bubbles?

Basically, any name which might be used for a dog carried around in a purse.

Many years ago, when a friend got a puppy, a bunch of us were sitting around thinking up names. Our friend said, don’t worry about it, I’ll come up with something soon enough. And one of the guys said, dripping with sarcasm, so what will you call him in the meantime? Ned?

And of course …

1) For the record, the Hobbes cartoon character was named for the philosopher (as was his counterpart Calvin for the theologian).

2) Name the dog as Tintin named his: ‘Snowy’ in English, I don’t know the French.

Speaking as the past owner of a dog called Henry (you’d have liked Henry) I’d counsel against anything that’s even vaguely recognisable as a person’s name. People will look askance; people will make funny jokes.

Our cat when I was growing up was called Little My; the cat we’ve got at the moment is Snufkin. Neither of them fitted the names very well, unfortunately.

Something long but shortenable would appeal to me – “Arcimboldo” (Archie) or “Gesualdo” (Jess), maybe. “Athanasius”. “Atahuallpa”. “Montmorency”. A four-syllable name is also good for calling out in full, for variety.

/me makes note to get dog and call it “Mont-mor-EN-cy!”

Toki, from the character in Hokuto no Ken.

“Lynne, that was taken when he was 6 weeks old, and he’s now almost 8. I’m afraid it is inevitable that I will post more pictures of him!”

Yay!

Milou?

How about Cameron?

Then you can go to the park and yell out things like “Cameron, stop humping people’s legs!” and “Cameron, don’t eat any more poop!”

Hobbes is out of the question: feline.

“We’re not allowed to get pretentious ones after writers and such”

You can always choose a pretentious name that shortens up nicely. Or use the first name, not the last. And why not something Irish?
You might choose Carolan, after the harpist, and call him Carry.
Or how about Finn, after Finn McCool?
Or Seamus, for Seamus Heaney? In the US, Seamus is a great name for a dog, I don’t know about London.

Morgan. After the 60s movie hero who thought he was a monkey.

What about Stirlitz or Gorky, Vanya, or Alexi — Sasha?

I thought Fuzzbot was good. Although I don’t know if calling “FUZZ!” in a South London park is OK.

I would never recommend a dog name, but I would advise against naming after a former dog, depending on your present emotional attachment to the former dog.

Go counterintuitive? Red, or Blue

Anticipate? NoNo (Might be confusing)

Get metaphysical? Doggod, or may Goddog. Upside, you can claim it’s Welsh.

Sake is a nice name and rice wine can come in white.

Saki is a nice variant and a few will recognize him as hhmunro.

Our first dog was named Dogen after the author of the Shobogenzo. I still think it’s a great name for a dog.

“cats are far more suited than dogs”

You nailed it. I could have told you in advance had you asked.

” It is a true shame that we love these creatures who we are destined to outlive.”

I grew up with cats and didn’t know how to handle a dog. Our first was a big one: a collie/German shepherd mix that was hybrid hardy in size but incontinent as a leaky hose. We lived together uneasily for many years before I learned how not to be a jerk about it. Then, he got an aggressive cancer and died within weeks of the diagnosis. We knew it would be any day, but we kept putting off the trip to the vet. The last morning walk was over snow, and we got half way around the block when his back legs gave out. Dogs have those damn eyes. Always looking to please. Like that line from Mr. Bojangles, “After 20 years he still grieved.” It’s been 26.

Snowball

In honor of the past/present winter

Muttnik – the first dog in space; of Siberian extraction and thus a distant cousin to your little puffball.

I have a cat named Widget, who is semi-feral and hates me. Nevertheless, it’s a good name for a small dog.

I quite like Dogen. A venerable name.

There’ve been so many good suggestions here Maria, that I think you might have to acquire a pack? :D

And yes, we lose them or they lose us: but, humans or non-humans, if we miss them, it’s only because they were worth having in our lives. :)

Scamp. Can be said in various tones of voice, as events warrant.

…and, completely ot but related to my last comment, I just got approved to take a dozen students to Middle Earth over spring break next year. Yay!

Gandalf!

(Or, before that, Saruman.)

Or even Judge.

How about “Altie” or “North”? He’s obviously a Whitehead.

Very cute dog. Makes me miss my corgi Burt. After he died I calculated that we walked approximately the distance across the USA, leg-lifting and pooper-scooping all the way.

MPAVictoria’s comment reminds me of something I’d forgotten, or stashed away. A dear friend of mine had a dog called Emily (not having had the foresight to consult me on name choice, possibly because I didn’t then know her). Emily got very old and very tired, and we all wondered how M would take it when she had to be put down; she lived alone (as far as other humans were concerned) and Emily was basically her oldest and best friend. What happened in the end was that an aggressive cancer took M first; Emily survived her by a day or maybe two (she was in a very bad way by then; I think even M would have had her put down if she hadn’t been otherwise engaged).

Anyway, one of the ways in which Emily started to fail, before M’s own health problems hit, was that her back legs stopped working so well; in fact, after a while they didn’t work at all. So M got her a little two-wheeled cart arrangement – a doggie wheelchair, really – so that she could rest her hindquarters while still going for walks. At M’s memorial a neighbour said he’d seen M walking Emily with her cart. He didn’t say it looked odd or silly; he said he looked at them and he thought, “Man, that lady loves her dog!” Hopefully when people see you they’re thinking something similar, MPAV.

My current (boy) dog is Boris, aka Bob, aka Bobo, aka Bo, aka Borissimo. I was undecided for quite a while and someone suggested he looked like nothing so much as an awkward teenage chess prodigy.

I did have a Stella (Stellaluna, as she had huge black bat-ears), and it was in fact very satisfying to stand on the porch and yell “STELLAAAA!!!” She took her walks in a wagon in her last days.

re @90: there we are Maria – is Boris Godunov? (groan) ;)
(and he’s blonde like the other one: are you planning to have him neutered or will his doghood be left intact? )

Smuckers.

Corvette.

Phil’s story reminded me that I celebrated Burt in a poem; I don’t wish to hijack the thread, but this is my bold celebration of my friend:

Redeemed by the CARQUEST Man
For Burt, 1996-2007

Eleven o’clock and time to walk Burt,
now 11 as well going on dead,
needing a strap around his left hind leg
so that the other three play out his marionette sprawl,
one-fourth puppeteered well enough
to sniff and mark the kingdom in his head.
I am full of death now, 54 a number with sharp edges
scarring my heart—when Dad grabbed his chest, eyes
ablaze with disbelief that a body could be Aaron Burr
too. Burt doesn’t know death, but I know his
will come when this damn strap isn’t enough,
and he will look at me as if I were some god, or satan.
The air tonight is an extra skin full of grease
that will kill something if not me.
We cross the street safe in the fact that
towns this size breathe traffic in gasps, and this late
suffer from apnea.
Burt sniffs and waddles, and then I hear a sound
I have heard a hundred and ten times at least,
a truck’s groan as it upshifts onto my street-cum-state-highway,
and I know it. He runs through Burt’s kingdom,
not knowing it as such, every single stinking night,
seven unbelievable days a week, delivering
cables and batteries and injectors to cars
that need cutting into, like a man’s chest, to spite junkmen.
He waves at the man with the dog who now needs help
but didn’t not so long ago, and I wave at him,
our only contact because of delivery rounds and emptying bowels
in a senseless synchronic union. I smile the only smile
I will have until bed, as Burt and I stumble back
through the dark summer night, secured in our love for
rhythm, the familiar, the not quite yet childless moment.

Kea. As in Mauna Kea. Mountain White. Plus you can yell it like Stella….. KAYYYY Ah. Here boy.

I had a chocolate lab named Bosco. After the syrup. Trained him to wear sunglasses with a croakie all day. He really liked sunglasses. He wind surfed with strangers at the beach down the street. Back when they used those really big Bic boards. Cars would ride by and blow the horn and people we’d never met would call out for Bosco. He also board surfed. I had to glue a piece of astroturf to the front of an old longboard we’d ride tandem. Also fetch under water, like from the bottom of a pool. This was before children. We had lots more time. And the next dog was named Buster after a local city commissioner who proposed banning dogs from the beach for sanitary reasons. At the public hearing he complained: “They leave those fetuses all over the beach. You can’t move without stepping on a fetus.” So we named the dog after him. irresistible. Someone stole Buster.

Maria, you know how my family came down on this issue, with a Rosie and a Martha. We find that the girl names work well, though there are so many dogs named Rose, or a variation of that, that in the dog park it’s sometimes hard to tell whose dog is being called/reprimanded/loved to bits. From your original list I’d go with Milo or Max. You will inevitably rely on nicknames so don’t get too hung up on the “real” name.

What a cutie, all fur at this age (though with Samoyeds, aren’t they all fur all the time?).

I like Nevsky

or if one wants to go Russian, Cher or Cherona, are close to the Russian words for snow and snowfall

Ziggy!