When I was little I used to give lots of names to things I loved, like my parents and my favourite toys. I have never got over this, and now I have a cat I can be as soppy as I like with him. I call him Richard some of the time, of course (he was named after the physicist Richard P Feynman), but his most usual name is "bear". However, he has or has had a great many other names in his life. Here are some I can remember, a few of the odder ones with explanations:
A B C E F G H K L M N O P R S T W
Automatic Refusing Machine [when he won’t eat anything we give him]
baby bear
bearby
Bird Jaguar [name of a Mayan king]
Bräuner [name of a bear in Wagner’s Siegfried; means "brown one"]
Brown
bruin
chirruper
cuddle-chum
Cuddlepussy
ear-pointer
expeditioner [when he’s been out a very long time]
fluff-bomb
fluff-friend
fur-bearer
fur-bearing bear
fur-friend
fuzzy wuzzy wuz a bear [found on CompuServe]
Growltiger [when he growls; name of a cat in T S Eliot’s cat poems]
His Majesty [when he’s ordering us about]
kittenkin
lion-bear
lioncel [a heraldic term meaning "little lion"]
lionkin
little bear
little lion
little panther
little R
Living Softa ["Softa" is a baby-word of my sister’s, meaning "something soft you hold to your face"]
The Mighty Hunter [a quote from Ringworld by Larry Niven]
Mr Fluff-fur
Mr Fluffybottom
Mr Silly Nuisance [after a late friend of my grandmother’s known as Mrs Silly Nuisance]
much-loved pet
nuisance-bear
Old Squeaker [when he meows a lot]
Old Tickletummy
ornament
paddy kitten
paddy-paws
piscivore [because he eats a lot of fish]
pusspaws
R
R-beast
Richa
Richabear
Richal
Richawicha
roly-poly pussing and pie [when he rolls about]
Sir [when he orders us about]
strokyfur
Tailykin
tiger kitten
tiny tiger
toy tiger
trichophore [Greek: "fur-bearer"]
Wild Thing
Top
of page
Previous
Next
Richard's
Homepage