Well, their "real" names aren't that interesting... just "people" names that seemed to fit them.

The real story is in their various nicknames.

Archie (a Bichon Frise) is no longer with us. But my stepdad used to call him "Archie Bunker," which got abbreviated to "Bunker," which somehow morphed into "Dunker."

Toby (a Golden Retreiver mix) will turn 2 in October but is still very much a puppy. A BIG puppy (83 lbs), but a puppy nonetheless. My mom started talking to him in baby-talk and saying stuff like "Toby, wooodoo (would you) come in pleeeeease?" "Toby, wooodooo knock it off?" etc. Somehow she started calling him "Toby WooDoo," which turned into "WooDoo." Also the obvious "Tobe," short for Toby. I mostly call him "Toby" or "Tobe," though.

We had a dog named Dakota when I was a kid. He was a big, hyper shepard/lab mix. The only nickname he had, I think, was Kota, which is obvious where that came from.

Other pets... I had a string of small mammals, two gerbils, then a dwarf hamster, then a teddy bear hamster. They were: Ramona and Emma (the gerbils), Cowboy (dwarf hamster), and Dorothy (teddy bear hamster). I honestly don't know how I picked the names. I do know that Cowboy ended up being a girl, so that was kinda confusing for her, I'm sure.

I have also had various parakeets throughout the years. When I was a kid, I had a very smart yellow/green parakeet named Najee. We had two parakeets when I was in college, a white one named Sid and a blue one named Sergei. Sergei was named after my brother's then-favorite hockey player, Sergei Federov. Sid was short for "Obsidian," since Sid was plain white and Obsidian is black and somehow we thought that was funny. I had a pair of parakeets a couple of years ago named Monkey and Lucy. My brother named Lucy; I'm not sure why. Then most recently I had a pair of parakeets named Hannah and Maya. They got the nicknames "Hannah Banana" and "Maya Papaya."

I've had a whole bunch of fish, too. Most of them didn't have names. I just gave my fishtank to a friend and her kid a few weeks ago (kid is 4), and he promptly gave them all sorts of names. I can't remember what all he named them, though. All of the danios were named "Fast." One of the coris was named "Sucker Up." The other cori is named "Striped." There are two dwarf frogs in there that he named, too. I can't remember what he called them though.