You're listening to Away With Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Barnett.

There's an old proverb that goes, Beloved Children have many names.

But I think an even more appropriate proverb would be beloved pets have many names because

there's this real creative exuberance that people who live with pets tend to have when we name our animals.

I'm sure you've had this experience.

Yeah, we don't name them once, right?

We keep naming them and renaming them and renaming them until they're unrecognizable.

And we've been talking about that on our Facebook group and there were some great examples

there.

Deanna wrote that her pet's name took a journey that went like this.

Romeo, Romi, Rom, Moome, Moomi,

Moomu, schmoumoumush, boopi.

And I bet the dog answers to all of them, right?

Well, of course, yeah.

And then Sheerise wrote, I too have a Romeo.

He's gone from Romeo to

Romeo to momo to mow to mow moseus

Maximus. And Shries also has a pet named Apollo who went from Apollo to Apollo to Apollo to

Pudding to Puy to Pow Wow to Woe to Wow. Yep he went from the God

Apollo to Wow. That's great and there there's so many of these, both on the Facebook page and the Facebook group.

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