Your turn: Share your creative -- or just plain wacky -- pet names

Dog Vader. Purr Diem. Chairman Meow. Boo Manchu. Bettie Poops.

I always love creative dog names and hearing from owners why and how they came up with them.

Recently I was sitting next to the owner of a Dachshund in my veterinarian's waiting room. They'd named him Sieben (ZEE-bin), which is "seven" in German.

The breed's origins, of course, are German -- and he was the seventh dog they've had as a family.

I named one of my previous dogs (an Australian shepherd-border collie mix)  "Mercy."

Just weeks before I found her as a stray, I'd heard a talk on the 23rd Psalm given by Scottish theologian Sinclair Ferguson in which he recalled the faithfulness of the sheepdogs guiding and tending the sheep in his homeland.

Picking up on the verse that says "For goodness and mercy shall surely follow me all the days of my life,"  he compared the constant watchfulness of the dogs to how God shepherds his people. He went on to say that if he ever had a couple sheepdogs he'd name them "Goodness" and "Mercy."

Some people like the more comedic touch in naming pets. The folks at VPI Pet Insurance compile the "wackiest" pet names list each year and they recently published their 2010 list (the names in italics at the top of this thread come from that list).

Now it's your turn: Poetic and serious -- or just plain funny -- what are some of the best names you've heard or used  --  and why did you pick them?

You can either leave a comment here or email me (include a photo of your pet if you'd like) at donna.littlejohn@dailybreeze.com