The best part about adding a new pet to the household is getting to name it! Here at GeekMom we have quite the collection of geeky pet names, although I'm sure the list would be longer if some selfless souls had not been so kind as to let their five-year-old name the new cat Snowball or Mittens (for the record, I was not one of them). Meet the GeekPets!
GeekPet: Jaws
Owner: Sarah
About the name: My first fish was called Jaws as I was obsessed with sharks at the time.
Extra geek cred: My son's name, Tobias, comes from a West Wing character, as does my unborn son, Charlie.
GeekPet: Pickles Ophelia
Owner: Cindy
Reason: My cat is named Pickles Ophelia. Pickles because--although I was 15 when I adopted her--I loved the Rugrats. The Ophelia is because I loved Hamlet.
GeekPet: Baron
Owner: Cindy
About the name: My Yorkie is named "Baron" after the Bloody Baron in Harry Potter.
GeekPet: Mulder & Scully
Owner: Sophie
About the name: My pet fish were called Mulder & Scully when I was a kid. One night, Scully ate Mulder--well, either that, or he was abducted by aliens, because one morning we came downstairs and he was gone! Later I had another fish called Obi-Wan.
Extra geek cred: My current pets don't have geeky names but next time we adopt cats I'm lobbying for Perry (from Phineas & Ferb) and Piper (from Piper Maru - Gillian Anderson's daughter and the name of a ship in X-Files).
GeekPet: Willow
Owner: Chaos Mandy
About the name: "One of my cats has a geeky name. Her name is Willow, after the character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
GeekPet: Howie
Owner: Patricia
About the name: While our dog's name isn't "geek culture" geeky, I think it'll hold a candle here. Howie is named after Dr. Howard Bluestein--a founder and principal investigator of the 1995 and 2010 VORTEX tornado chase field experiments. There were other famous meteorologists we were thinking of naming him after (Simpson, Rossby, Dvorak--the satellite one, not the music one, Hadley, Walker, Fujita), but we wanted to keep it subtle.
Extra geek cred: Howie's now 11.5 and we now have the kids who will probably take over naming duties for future pets -- I can see Perry or Mace Windu being finalists.
GeekPet: Malcolm
Owner: Laura "Laura's blog")
About the name: Malcolm, the best barn cat ever, is named for an obscure character in Harry Potter.
GeekPet: Jedi
Owner: Laura
About the name: Jedi, our gentle elderly German Shepherd, has long served and protected using the Force.
GeekPet: Gustav
Owner: Laura
About the name: Gustav, a mild mannered steer, whose name was inspired by Gustav Holst.
GeekPet: Samantha Ann Ketimine
Owner: Kay
About the name: My cat for 18 years was Samantha Ann Ketimine. A ketimine is a chemical that I heard about in organic chemistry-- a class of imines.
GeekPet pair: Denny & Cil
Owner: Katje
About the names: We own two cats named after the first two proteins in RNA (Denny and Cil, short for Adenine and Uracil).
GeekPet: Catch
Owner: Ariane
About the name: Bearded dragon named Catch after a character from Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore.
GeekPet: Raven
Owner: Ariane
About the name: Black cat named after a character from Snow Crash by Neil Stephesen.
GeekPet: Anathema
Owner: Ariane
About the name: Black cat named Anathema after Anathema Device, a character from Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.
Extra geek cred: Our daughter's middle name is Faye, after Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bepop.
