I knew someone who called them all Dave. Kept things simple, I suppose.

My dog is called snoop and my cat is called Stevens.

Many years ago we had two dogs (one male, one female) called Mulder and Scully.

Took a while to settle on our cat's name.

First of all I tried Linux commands (sudo was the one that stuck for a while, given how the cat dominated the dog.)

That fell out of favour though, and then we had kids and needed a proper name for her.

And then they printed a Magic Card called Generous Stray:

https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/3/2/3289db66-231f-4370-aca6-644d75bee293.jpg

Reminded me so much of my cat, it had to be done. Therefore:

Genny.

Kids can say it - yes. Sounds normal - yes. Cat doesn't respond to it - of course. Really weird story - well, I think so.

My wife just called the dog Bella by the way, perhaps she should name the next cat.

Old lady names, our cat is called Ethel 😹

I really like animals with pedestrian human names.

Like a cat named Dave.

I've mostly just kept their names from rescue. I adjusted the spelling of Louis to Louie, because to me Louis is pronounced either Lewis or like the mum from Malcolm in the Middle.

Chalky kept his name because he's 12 so good luck teaching him anything else.

We renamed our girl to Freya because we were having a viking phase. She was Dolly before so would have changed it no matter what.

I remember quite a funny comment on the Trashfuture podcast a while ago, about a reversal in naming convention.

Someone observed that the sort of person who drives a big posh Range Rover would give thier daughter a name like Binkie and the dog would be called Sarah.

I name mine what I would of liked to name my kid, but couldn't because I'm not that bad. So I have two dogs Ben & Dover (Ben Dover).

A lot of mine have been named after food. Kind of weird now that I think about it, it wasn't really intentional, it just fit their personalities at the time.

I know a couple that use the phonetic alphabet.

No pets at the moment but will use white goods manufacturers in future - Ariston, Zanussi, Smeg etc.

Through a strenuous process of debate and whittling down. We all ended up calling the cats different names in the end and all the talk didn't matter because they're cats and answer to anything if they want to.

The only way to go is an original name that reflects the personality of the dog (if it's a rescue) or what you imagine it might become (if it's a puppy). A dog's name is really important; take some time to think of something original!