As bat shit crazy as it sounds, I don’t. I let the name “come to me”, or wait for the critter to pick its name.
It isn’t literal woowoo hippy bullshit, but it looks like or when I try to explain it lol.
But it’s a matter of letting the subconscious mind have a chance to percolate with the personality and “nature” of the pet.
But it just kind of pops into my head at some point. Might be the second I meet the animal, might be weeks later. And it never fails me because when I let that happen, the animal immediately recognizes the name as theirs. That’s held true for anything but invertebrates and most fish, even a pissy iguana and an unusually smart oscar.
What sucks is that sometimes the name isn’t very cool lol. For every shaitan and samson, there’s a sugarplum and a cricket.
People names are always fun
Every time I have adopted pets from the shelter(all of my pets), we just throw out random sounds and syllables until they respond. Basically, they choose their own name.
Lots of movie and video game references for the ones that don’t have actual names when they come to us.
Growing up our male dogs were named after middle linebackers by my grandfather and I - Butkus, LT, Lloyd, Lambert, etc. - as they were Newfies. One of my greatest young successes (in my mind) came when we had a half Newfie, half something else: Polamalu. Wasn’t technically a linebacker, but played like one.
Female dogs were named by my grandmother. it was usually some uncommon human name - Cora, Molly, etc.
