What's in a name?

Otis is the name of the elevator manufacturer that we stumbled upon the other day.
I wouldn't probably ever had otherwise taken note of it except for the fact that that name had come up in conversation earlier that day.
"Otis" is to be the pet name of a friend of mine's new baby kitten.

And while I will now forever associate her kitty with elevator manufacturers, the name came from a character in a sitcom: Otis, a drunken character, from the Andy Griffith show.  :)

It got me to thinking about the modern preponderance for wacky names and a liking towards the unusual.  I mean, Gary and I named our cats Pickles and Cornbread.  I was fairly certain at the time, that those were entirely unique names... but I have heard of other animals named Pickles.  Cornbread, on the other hand, is still a one-and-only.

Pet names have always been interesting.  I remember as a kid, I had a "Sandy" cat, a "Her-she" dog (note the spelling - we kept referring to her as a boy before we named her), a "Peanut" cat, and many others.  My grandparents had "Thunder" and "Lightning" cats, and my aunt has an "Olympia".  I think pet naming is perhaps a good excuse for  us to call animals names that we would only hope we'd be brave enough to cal another person.  But then again, I think that whole idea is changing as well.  "Human" names are becoming much more creative.  What with the Hollywood starlets and modern-day hippies as a perfectly good example, naming is a much more liberal and carefree sport, as it were.  I think it's important to think about a lot of things when naming a child, but I like the fact that the parents get to be as creative as they want.  Anything goes these days!

I'm looking forward to the day where we will get to conjure up names for our kids.
They're gonna be goodies!  :)