Feline Onomastics

AJD and I don't really name our animals.  It's more like we wait for them to reveal their names to us.  In some cases, particularly in the earlier days, an animal went without revealing its name for months.   My little white seal has never told me her name; when I was younger, I was always changing it, which I take to be a sign that she's chosen to be very private with her name and I like to respect personal boundaries.   

I'm not going to write a post about the sources for all of the animals' names.  At some point, probably after we figure out how to take pictures of these guys, I'm intending to start doing features on this animal and that one, and I'll include how we found the animal's name there.  And, in the future, whenever an animal reveals its name to us, I'll do a post about that.

However, there's one aspect of Republican onomastics that I probably should do as a separate post, because otherwise I'll end up having to do it over and over again.  This has to do with the names we give the cats.

The modern Wild Republic has its roots in a trip to Washington DC over the 4th of July weekend three years ago, when I found Leprosy, Parsley, and the three cats of small stature in the gift shop at the Smithsonian.  The three cats all have Sanskrit names: the cheetah is Suraj ("sun"), the snow leopard Chandra ("moon"), and the black jaguar Chaya ("shadow").  (Yes: Chaya's name is Sanskrit, not Hebrew; the pronunciation is different.)  But they don't just all have Sanskrit names; they have Sanskrit nature names.  Therein lay madness, except I didn't realise it at the time.

None of the cats who found me before I became hostess of a Wild Republic chapter have nature names.  There's Casper, Seymour, Skandar, and Sithri: not a nature name in the batch.  But then AJD and I went to the zoo, where we met Flurry and Mahler, who are a snow leopard and clouded leopard respectively, and I thought, hey, snow leopards and clouded leopards could have nature names too... and there we are, the monster was born.  All felines must now have nature names.

Now, the astute reader will undoubtedly be objecting to himself that Mahler is not exactly a nature name, and the astute reader will of course be entirely correct.  But the astute reader should remind himself that Mahler is a surname, not a given name.  His full name is Cirrus Mahler, and Cirrus is of course an impeccable nature name.

The problem, of course, is that sometimes it's easy to come up with a suitable nature name, and sometimes it's not, especially when we're agreed in not wanting any of the animals to have names that are too obvious.

Khamsin's name was pretty easy to learn.  A khamsin is a particularly fierce sandstorm wind in the Sahara, which is suitable for a lightning-fast African feline.  AJD discovered Rusty's name within a day; his fur is redder than many tigers'.  Rust is an element of nature, right?  Rusty's actually only a nickname, but his full name - Marco Sequoyah - has a reference to nature also, and we learned it not long after we learned the nickname.  We decided that a nature-ish nickname and a nature surname ought to be sufficient.

Cami, as a black jaguar, took us rather longer.  This is partly because Cami is our shyest Wild Republican, and he was reluctant to tell us his full name.  "Cami" is a nickname, and it suits him well because his lovely black-on-black fur looks sort of like camouflage.  It is, however, not a suitable nature name.  Gaaa.  Eventually we worked out that his real name is Chalcedony.  Apparently "Cami" is the usual abbreviation of "Chalcedony" among black jaguars.  If you think this is weird, well, "Jack" is a nickname for "John" in English, so I don't think English-speakers are entitled to complain about the opacity of black jaguar pet names.

Then there was Sir Tristan, the ocelot.  He's a member of the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy, and the "sir" is inherited because he's a baronet as well as a knight.  Just try to find a nature name that is a) fitting for an ocelot and b) doesn't sound ridiculous when combined with "sir".  We discovered that the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy, felines tend to have nature surnames rather than nature names; Sir Tristan's full name is Sir Tristan Rivers.  Ocelots like to swim, you know. 

We're currently faced with what is probably our toughest case yet: our new baby lion.  He's not been all that forthcoming so far; he's been too busy fighting with Rusty over which of them gets to be the Top Baby Cat.  (Ancient tiger-lion rivalry, you see.)  The problem with lions is that they're a uniform tawny colour, which doesn't really lend itself to many good nature names.  Also, they're consciously of their own dignity, so our lion must have at least two names, and our boy hasn't given us any of them so far.

Meanwhile, there will soon be more feline names to discover, as the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy was so delighted with Sir Tristan's successes here that they've sent a delegation of his colleagues to join him.  This delegation includes three more cats.  Fortunately, they'll only need nature surnames, which are a bit easier to learn.