What to Name Your Pet or Human

Mack Hall

Ashley Sanders, one of the many fine writers at The Beaumont Enterprise, posted in her Sunday column a list of the top ten pet names according to an organization called Veterinary Pet Insurance. For dogs, those are:

1. Bella
2. Max
3. Bailey
4. Lucy
5. Molly
6. Buddy
7. Maggie
8. Daisy
9. Chloe
10. Sophie

What strikes the perceptive reader is that the top ten dog names are almost as Christian as the top ten human names.

Bella, meaning beautiful, appears as the prefix Bel in many saints’ names. Max, for Maximus, Maximian, and Maximilian, is popular in both Roman and Greek hagiography, and Bailey, Old English for bailiff, appears in several English and Bretagne saints’ names and as the middle name of St. Elizabeth Seton. Lucy (Bringer of Light) is the happy name of many saints all over Europe and the Mediterranean, Molly is a diminutive of Mary just as Maggie is of Margaret, and Daisy, the day’s eye flower in Old English, is also another name for Margaret since in France the daisy is called the marguerite. Even Buddy enjoys a Christian connection; in Old English it means messenger / friend / brother, and is associated with the Twelve Brothers of Carthage, Africans who were martyred for their Christian faith. Chloe is Greek for young growth and is not in itself a saint’s name but the root Chlo / Clo appears often. There are many saints named Sophie / Sophia, Greek for wisdom, and the mother church of Orthodoxy, profaned by the Turks from 1453 until the present day, is named Hagia Sophia, meaning Holy Wisdom. (Sheehan, Dictionary of Patron Saints’ Names)

Now that we have dismissed the doggies, let us consider the top ten baby names of 2009 according to Babyfirstyear.org:

Girls:

Ella
Grace
Emma
Elizabeth
Lorelei
Riley
Rory
Isabella
Chloe
Anna

Boys:

Aiden
Jayden
Dylan
James
Gavin
Benjamin
Caleb
Nathan
Jack
Andrew

All these names except one enjoy a Christian or Jewish origin, reversing a generation-old trend of labeling children after soap opera characters, geographical features, or simply noises that sounded good to the young parents. God help the child whose parents thought “Urk” made a nice sound. Well, when he comes of age he can change Urk for a real name.

One kinda worries about Lorelei, though.

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