The Name Game
I have a problem. A uniquely nerdy problem.
I can’t seem to stop naming pets and inanimate objects after my favorite characters.
When I was a kid, my naming conventions for pets were normal enough. I had two parakeets named Banana and Icicle — Banana was yellow and green, and Icicle blue and white. When they died, we got another parakeet, which I named Zelda, after my invisible friend (invisible twin sister, to be precise) from childhood. To this day I don’t know where that name came from, and I’m not sure the bird appreciated it — soon enough, as the flesh over “her” beak turned from purple to a clear blue, we realized that Zelda was not as feminine as we’d been led to believe. But the fact remained that the names were nice, normal pet names.
The last normally-named pet I had was a betta fish I got in 9th grade; its name was Aquarius. When he died, sometime during my sophomore year of high school, it was like a switch got thrown: suddenly, all of my future pets would have names related to my geeky obsession of the moment. Jumping right into the deep end of nerdiness, I named my next betta fish Mark Roger Caplan-Pascal, after my two favorite characters from the musical RENT and my two favorite actors (Matt Caplan and Adam Pascal) who’d played those roles. And believe me, I never abbreviated the name. Every day I’d come home, sprinkle some food into the bowl, and cheerfully greet him with, “Hello, Mark Roger Caplan-Pascal!”
My next betta fish was Captain Jack Kelly, a combination of the names of my two favorite “Jack” characters: Pirates of the Caribbean‘s Captain Jack Sparrow, and Jack Kelly from Newsies. After that, I had Javid, an amalgamation of Newsies‘ Jack and David. By the time he died, I was in college and making my way into comic book fandom, so my next fish were, predictably, a blue male and a red female that I named Scott and Jean — and later a runty yellow male named Logan. (Nowadays, I’m up to my seventh geeky betta fish: the hardy red-white-and-blue Captain Amerifish.)
It was around the time of the Scott and Jean fish that I began to notice my pets unconsciously taking on the characteristics of their namesakes. Be it cosmic coincidence or willful interpretation, I couldn’t help attributing their behavior to their fictional counterparts. Captain Jack Kelly, for instance, hadn’t so much died as simply up and vanished from his tank, just like his escape-artist namesakes. (I still suspect my parents actually found him dead and flushed him, but they refuse to admit that to this day.) Then there was Jean, who, appropriately enough, died before Scott in spectacular fashion (I’m still waiting for her return from the cocoon I assume she must be forming), and Logan, who outlived them both. On particularly boring college afternoons, I liked to gaze at my Scott and Logan fish and imagine the inevitable fight to the death that would result if they were to mix in the same tank (male bettas attack each other automatically, but I liked to think their namesakes’ rivalry would have made the battle even worse).
This habit of geeky naming and personality attribution was only heightened when I began to follow nerd conventions and name my personal tech. After a non-geeky first computer named Magellan had burned out its hard drive within two months of purchase (a word to the wise: don’t name computers after explorers who were victims of mutiny), I christened my new computer Captain America, and he continued to function beautifully for several years despite the advancement of his chronological age. My red external hard drive I decided to name Iron Man (and he occasionally refused to work properly with Cap, though they usually got along splendidly), and I named my maroon phone Dark Phoenix and my second iPod Marvel Girl (neither has attacked me yet, but I sometimes worry about letting Dark Phoenix reach its signal into space). None of this compared to the fate of my first iPod, though. Since it was silver, I’d decided to call it Bucky, reasoning that if it ever died, I’d know it wasn’t really gone — it was just brainwashed and turned into an assassin for a foreign government! Unbelievably, Bucky wound up experiencing an unfortunate washing machine incident, but though I believed he’d been drowned, he actually recovered a few days later — after I’d already bought his replacement. The only way the story could be more perfect is if he’d reprogrammed himself in Russian.
All this brings me to the past week, when I bought three new important things: a computer, and two gerbils. The computer I named Pixie, after a minor X-Men character with butterfly wings and a crush on Cyclops (my personal Mary Sue if ever there was one). The computer is pink and black, like the character’s hair, and as long as it doesn’t get transported into Limbo and get part of its soul removed, it should be ok.
More worrying are my gerbils, who I named Jean and Wanda. Jean is a lovely tan color; Wanda is a nice black and white. And while I named them that largely because of the friendship Jeff Parker (and Colleen Coover!) gave them in X-Men: First Class, I haven’t gotten a solid feel for their personalities yet. I can’t help but wonder what will happen if they decide to take their cues from the Dark Phoenix Saga, or the House of M.
So if my gerbils decide to eat the sun or tamper with genetics on a worldwide scale… well, I apologize in advance.
(So, what are your geeky pet or tech names? I know I’m not alone. Feel free to share in the comments!)
Dave Carrr said,
May 19, 2009 at 9:41 am
My twin sister and I like to make bad puns when we name objects. She is off to law school in the fall, so her automobile has been named habeas Carrpus
throughthebrush said,
May 19, 2009 at 11:07 am
Hee! That’s awesome. I didn’t mention my own car because it’s had so many different names — it’s alternately called Mary Sue, La Carcanchita, The Princeton Kitty, and The Manley Popemobile (that one’s better left unexplained — it has to do with a RENT actor) — by different people.
Kait said,
May 19, 2009 at 6:40 pm
The Manley Popemobile
Oh my god, that is the greatest thing I have heard all day.
Margot said,
May 19, 2009 at 9:43 am
My pets have never had geeky names, because I’ve never been allowed to name them. Dad always named the cats (Beelzebub, Cataract, and Purrfekt) and roommate names the current cats, so… fail.
OTOH, my computers and my first car had geek names. First computer was Moya, who, like the ship on Farscape was well loved but abused greatly by me. Second computer was Dot (I’m still not sure what I was thinking there – I think the original goal was to name her TARDIS, but that just sounded weird). Dot was a prankster and tended to overheat and explode, so at least she fit with Dot Warner.
Current one is Star, because at the time Starfire was my only favorite female character who wasn’t dead, fridged, insane, or evil. (I refuse to name anything after Babs, because I don’t have her computer skills, and I fear the computer will work against me.) Of course, it now looks like poor comics!Starfire is about to go insane, so if my computer explodes, I’m blaming Didio.
(Note – I am a firm believer that all computers are female. I blame Star Trek for this. My next computer will probably be Uhura.)
My car was the Redbird. Like all Robin transportation, it did not end well.
Also, I love the stories about your fish. And gerbils.
throughthebrush said,
May 19, 2009 at 11:10 am
I’ve always liked your computer names.
I think your advantage is that you name them after things you’re not likely to mention as often — I always name mine after ultimate favorites, so then people tend not to know if I’m talking about the character or the pet/tech. Whoops!
Margot said,
May 19, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Half the time now I tend to forget that Star actually *has* a name. She’s just the computer. She lacks a personality, which makes me think that she is not named correctly. Moya had the most personality of all of my computers. I miss that computer! (Dad resurrected her actually, so perhaps I should have named her Jean in retrospect.)
I’m pretty sure my ipod back when I had one was Talyn. He died painfully. Fail at naming things, self!
Kait said,
May 19, 2009 at 6:49 pm
I haven’t had a pet in ages, but I definitely follow fannish trends when naming my electronics and cars.
My first car and first iPod came at the same time, along with my second cell phone. I named the car Basil, the phone Lord Henry, and the iPod Dorian after characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Hilariously, much as you’ve chronicled above, they all came to terrible ends the same way as their characters. Basil died first in a terrible car crash at my brother’s hands. Dorian died tragically and suddenly some time later. Lord Henry never really died, merely became obsolete.
My next phone was Dexter, after the lead character in the teevee show of the same name. My next iPod was Milo, after the main character in The Phantom Tollbooth. The next fannish set, though, came when I got my new computer. I named the shiny MacBook Pro William after Will Bailey on The West Wing. My external hard drive that soon followed was (predictably) named Sam. My car had already been called Leo, and I recently rounded the set out by named my new cellphone Charlie.
(The same phone was previously named Teyla. I lost that one and had to replace it, thus reinforcing my superstition that naming my things after sexy ladies means that they will disappear
)
The weird thing is that I always tend to lengthen the names of my things. I call my computer “William” more often than “Will” and call my phone “Charles” more often than “Charlie.” I did the inverse with my old computer (the non-fannishly named “Reginald” who was “Reggie” by the end of the year.) and I’m not sure why.
throughthebrush said,
May 19, 2009 at 7:43 pm
I love all your names.
Oddly, I don’t tend to lengthen names, but I do tend to use nicknames or just forget to use a name altogether — I rarely actually REFER to my tech by name, even though they have names, and I frequently have just called my fish “fishie” — or something like “Jeannie fishie.” In the time since I’ve gotten the gerbils, I’ve made an effort to call them by their names, but sometimes they’re just “girls” or “babies” when I address them.
Rebecca said,
May 19, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Gosh, let’s see here. My first computer was Sam I Am, after the Dr. Seuss character, but by way of Moxy Fruvous specifically. Sam had the most personality of any computer I ever owned, by which I mean he was a lemon and broke a lot, but damned if I don’t miss him. My first iPod was named Deej!, complete with exclamation point, after Derek Jeter. After Sam came Tulio, named for the character from the Road to El Dorado; my second (current) iPod is named Miguel, who is Tulio’s partner in crime in the movie (you can insert your own joke about plugging Miguel in here). And my current computer is Leia, which I hope is obvious.
Leia is doubtlessly the nerdiest of the names, but Sam I Am was the one I was the most hardcore fannish about (in that I went to four Fruvous concerts in the space of six months before they broke up).
throughthebrush said,
May 19, 2009 at 7:44 pm
I never knew your Sam computer had a full name! That’s awesome. (And four concerts in six months is… a lot. Wow.)
Three Years in Comics at Fantastic Fangirls: Comics and Culture said,
June 3, 2009 at 9:34 am
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