Coke, Salmon, Synfull and Snacke. They're all good hounds, Edward.

November 22, 2022 3:09 PM

In the early 15th century, Edward, 2nd Duke of York, wrote a list of 1,126 names he considered to be suitable for dogs. Link to the paper "The Names of All Manner of Hounds: A Unique Inventory in a Fifteenth-Century Manuscript" by David Scott-Macnab. Via Twitter user @WeirdMedieval.
posted by pipeski (36 comments total)

Oh, the full list starts on p.357
posted by pipeski at 3:10 PM on November 22, 2022

These are great. FYI, the site asks you to register to "continue reading" or download, but you can just scroll down to find the hound names.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:45 PM on November 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

This immediately brought to mind the Watersons' Noble Fox Hunting, a fine song with a much shorter list of hound names, none of which appear here. The song dates from the mid 17th century. (Also known as "Dido, Bendigo", for the first two hounds enumerated in the chorus).
posted by mr vino at 3:46 PM on November 22, 2022 [5 favorites]

Nosewise is such a perfect name for a dog and you could call it Nosey, dying that this isn't the single hottest name for dogs
posted by potrzebie at 3:47 PM on November 22, 2022 [13 favorites]

BRAYNELES THOUGH HAHAHA
posted by potrzebie at 3:51 PM on November 22, 2022 [6 favorites]

I have a tiny baby heeler to name in three weeks, so seeing this again is definitely timely.

Spouse is pumping hard for Gaylarde; roommate is voting for Tullymully; for my part, Oribull seems terribly fetching ...
posted by sciatrix at 4:18 PM on November 22, 2022 [6 favorites]

When I read this list I'm going to imagine it in the voice of Anthony Andrews as Sir Percival Blakeney, Baronet.
posted by The Tensor at 4:39 PM on November 22, 2022 [2 favorites]

Thanks for this. Some of us are really into talking about dog names.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:02 PM on November 22, 2022 [2 favorites]

This is the Christie’s listing, where it sold for £200K.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:07 PM on November 22, 2022

We had a wonderful dog named Cholmondeley, which is also how we found out that Los Angeles' dog registration has a character limit.
posted by blnkfrnk at 5:17 PM on November 22, 2022 [10 favorites]

See, this is the sort of thing rich dudes with too much confidence and time on their hands did back then; decide that there were exactly 1126 (not 1125 or 1127, 1126) acceptable names for dogs, sit down, put quill to parchment and get their manuscript on. Nowadays all of that oddball energy would be wasted on Twitter fights.
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:40 PM on November 22, 2022 [12 favorites]

Related twitter account: Dogs of Viking Dublin, run by Dr Ruth Carden.
posted by Rumple at 5:42 PM on November 22, 2022 [6 favorites]

Related twitter account: Dogs of Viking Dublin, run by Dr Ruth Carden.

I am loving this.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:32 PM on November 22, 2022 [2 favorites]

Boleyne

Medieval shade right there.
posted by adept256 at 6:38 PM on November 22, 2022 [2 favorites]

Oh, the full list starts on p.357

After clicking I was like oh, it is a journal article, but at first I thought there were 356 pages of explanation leading up to the list.
posted by Literaryhero at 7:02 PM on November 22, 2022

Okay, good, we've named the hounds. Now how about the milch cows? Broad May? Fillpail? Colley? Cushy? For centuries someone trying to encourage the cow to let down would say, "Cush, cush, cush, cush..." in a soothing monotone. The nursery rhyme goes:

Cushy cow bonny, let down thy milk,
And I will give thee a gown of silk;
A gown of silk and a silver tee,
If thou wilt let down thy milk to me.

And for the horses I've got Robbin, Dobbin and Hobbin.

That particular trio of names were so common that many little medieval children named their horse head on a stick Hobbin. They would gallop around waving a whip in the air, while holding onto the stick just below the head.

Similarly the most common name for a child's "baby" was Dorothea because for a century or two Dorothy was right up there as a first choice when you had a baby. You might remember Doll Tearsheet, that feckless associate of Falstaff? Doll was the diminutive version of the name Dorothy.

So the horsie was the child's Hobby horse, and the child's wood or clay or cloth baby was the child's Doll. You knew just what someone meant when the referred to a Hobby horse or a Doll, just as now you know what they mean when someone refers to a Teddy.

Here is a 1560 painting by Pieter Bruegel, which is fun to peer at closely to see how many games and toys you might recognize. The little lad on the hobby horse is in the foreground, to the left of the children bowling hoops.
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:45 PM on November 22, 2022 [35 favorites]

Is Bloodfang listed?
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:11 AM on November 23, 2022

I wonder if he could name his serfs.
posted by pompomtom at 5:37 AM on November 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

The internet provides numerous "worst/dumbest/funniest dog names lists", which maybe relevant for folks here naming their new dogs. Although "Dog" features prominently as a bad dog name, I'm disappointed that Doggie McDogface never turns up.
posted by jeffburdges at 6:32 AM on November 23, 2022

ok, this made the morning for the kiddos and me.

is it just us or does the Duke harbor a bias against greyhounds? as evinced by a disproportionate number of possibly derogatory names? the aforementioned Brayneles (!) plus:

Cacchecurse, Harlet, Helples, Leper (I hope he meant Leaper?), Nameles (ouch), Slugge, and...

Badde. As in, Badde Dog!

(also, the footnotes mention that seven were "added by a later hand" or "another hand." Because 1,119 names was clearly insufficient.
posted by martin q blank at 7:07 AM on November 23, 2022 [2 favorites]

This Duke had a lot of time on his hands. Great post.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:24 AM on November 23, 2022

Oh, you're saying 'brainless'!
I was reading that to rhyme with Hercules.
Like super strong, but in the brain.
posted by Acari at 7:55 AM on November 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

We had a wonderful dog named Cholmondeley, which is also how we found out that Los Angeles' dog registration has a character limit.

I suppose they need a limit somewhere, but that seems pretty meagre. The American Kennel Club has a limit of fifty characters, which seems more plausible for names.

Incidentally, the AKC organization's website page on the naming of dogs to be registered points out (without explanation) that there is a hard limit on the numbers of reuses of a name per breed -- i.e. you might have a mastiff called Nova and a Weimaraner called Nova and a Black Lab called Nova, but there is an explicit limit to the number of Novas in each breed. That limit?

The AKC permits thirty-seven (37) dogs of each breed to be assigned the same name.

I learned recently why this unusual figure is the limit: the numbers are in Roman numerals (Nova I, Nova II, etc.) and in the nineteenth century their original registration form had six spaces. XXXVII is the longest sequential number you can produce with this limit.

Weird to encounter a sort of Victorian Y2K problem,
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:09 AM on November 23, 2022 [17 favorites]

Via the wonderful Historia Civilis the Greek historian Xenophon wrote a manual on hunting with dogs where he also included a list of suitable dog names:

Psyche, Pluck, Buckler, Spigot, Lance, Lurcher, Watch, Keeper, Brigade, Fencer, Butcher, Blazer, Prowess, Craftsman, Forester, Counsellor, Spoiler, Hurry, Fury, Growler, Riot, Bloomer, Rome, Blossom, Hebe, Hilary, Jollity, Gazer, Eyebright, Much, Force, Trooper, Bustle, Bubbler, Rockdove, Stubborn, Yelp, Killer, Pele-mele, Strongboy, Sky, Sunbeam, Bodkin, Wistful, Gnome, Tracks, Dash

Xenophon was evidently going for quality over quantity, but probably was a source of inspiration for this nobleman's list.
posted by Grimgrin at 8:22 AM on November 23, 2022 [6 favorites]

There's a similar list from the eighteenth century in Peter Beckford's Thoughts upon Hunting (1781), which you can read here courtesy of the Internet Archive. It includes Arsenic, Atom, Awful, Bender, Brutal, Coroner and Curious (but not Tippler or Tapster, which Beckford thinks are vulgar names).

It's hard to read the medieval list without thinking of the scene in The Sword in the Stone where Master Twiti's favourite hound gets killed by the boar:

He stroked Beaumont's head and said, "Hark to Beaumont. Softly Beaumont, mon amy. Oyez à Beaumont the valiant. Swef, le douce Beaumont. Swef, swef." Beaumont licked his hand but could not wag his tail. The huntsman nodded to Robin who was standing behind, and held the hound’s eyes with his own. He said, "Good dog, Beaumont the valiant, sleep now old friend Beaumont, good old dog." Then Robin’s falchion let Beaumont out of this world, to run free with Orion and to roll among the stars.

Keith Thomas suggests in Man and the Natural World that before the modern era, dogs' names were merely 'descriptive labels'. With all due respect to Thomas, I'm not sure I agree: I think the medieval list clearly implies that dogs have individual personalities and that you can form an emotional bond with them. But Thomas is certainly right that these names signal the distance between humans and animals: i.e. you give a dog a semi-human name like Archer or Beaumont, but not a fully human name like Peter or John.
posted by verstegan at 8:28 AM on November 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

We had a wonderful dog named Cholmondeley, which is also how we found out that Los Angeles' dog registration has a character limit.

I hope their middle name is Featherstonehaugh.
posted by tclark at 8:29 AM on November 23, 2022 [4 favorites]

And for the horses I've got Robbin, Dobbin and Hobbin. That particular trio of names were so common that many little medieval children named their horse head on a stick Hobbin.

Interesting. When I was a kid, I had one of those not-at-all-CPSC-approved toy horses that bounced on a bunch of springs, so you could 'ride' it (and get your fingers stuck in the springs, natch).

I don't even know where it came from; it predated me. But it had a name: "Dobbin", and it was reportedly one of the first words I ever spoke.

Had no idea there was any history behind the name.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:59 AM on November 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

That particular trio of names were so common that many little medieval children named their horse head on a stick Hobbin.

If you plant the non-horse-headed end in the earth, then you can rightly say, "In a hole in the ground there stood a Hobbin."
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:16 AM on November 23, 2022 [2 favorites]

‘Stong’ is a pretty good name for a dog.
posted by Phanx at 9:39 AM on November 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

I hope their middle name is Featherstonehaugh.

When I was a child my parents had two miniature schnauzers, Commander Dolittle (Doodle) and Lord Featherstone (Feathers). I don't think they grokked that Feathers' real name should've been pronounced differently to the spelling until we lived in England, by which time Feathers was no longer with us.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 10:08 AM on November 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

Doll was the diminutive version of the name Dorothy.

Still is.
posted by The Bellman at 11:38 AM on November 23, 2022 [2 favorites]

Not only does this bring the old folk song "Dido Bendigo" to my mind, but also the parody by the Kippers: "Dido, Fido, Bonzo and Rex; Rover and Lassie and Spot/ There was Butch, there was Candy, There was Patch and there was Sandy/ These were the dogs what I had got."
posted by TigerB at 4:00 PM on November 23, 2022

I'd be disappointed if this list wasn't already imported into some fork of Nethack.
posted by credulous at 8:16 PM on November 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

I learned only recently that "Fido" is not a nonsense name, but Latin for "I trust." Tonight's did-I-invent-this-fact search suggests some adjective declension of "fidus"/"faithful," instead of a verb. But still, from the same place as "confide," "fidelity," and the like.

I didn't see "Fido" in the list, but I did see "Filthe," which suggests a different attitude if its meaning overlaps with the meaning in contemporary English.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 2:48 AM on November 24, 2022

I have no real reason for these "rules" and they're a joke anyway, but I believe dogs should be named after foods or classic country/pop stars (think more '50s/'60s & maybe dip into the '70s). Cats should be named after rock stars or literary figures (writers or characters).

It's at least a good starting point. (I do love when pets -- dogs, especially -- have really boring human names. It's adorable.)

Any pet can be named Kirby, though, after Jack Kirby. I know I only hang out with weirdos but I have known at least 3 people who have pets named Kirby. I do think it's more than that. It's a good pet name. Name your pet Kirby.
posted by edencosmic at 4:37 PM on November 24, 2022

Name your pet Kirby.

Thanks. I have this pink balloon-like animal that inhales other pets, and I'd planned to call it 'Sucky'. Kirby is much better.
posted by pipeski at 4:24 PM on November 25, 2022 [2 favorites]