If I Had a Million Dollars

We have many animals, and I’m sure you’re all wondering, “How do you come up with names for all those critters?” Let the curiosity end here! All of the animals Kayla and I have bought together have one naming convention in common; they’re all named after items in the Barenaked Ladies song If I had a Million Dollars, because let’s be honest, naming animals can be hard. Having a place to start makes it a lot easier. Let’s start at the beginning.

“If I had a million dollars Well, I’d buy you a house”

The first pet we got together was a baby corn snake named Dr. House. Unfortunately he slipped out of the tiniest hole in the hardest to reach part of the mesh screening of his cage. Somewhere in this house there is the desiccated corpse of a baby snake.

“I’d buy you furniture for your house Maybe a nice Chesterfield or an ottoman”

Chester was the second attempt at snake care (after I fixed the hole in the screen). His full name is Chesterfield the Ottoman.

After Chester we got Pablo. He came from a friend that had already named him, and we didn’t feel right about changing it. He doesn’t have any million dollar lyrics.

I also have a Beta fish that I got from a study at school. I don’t name fish though, so she’s just Female #3, because scientists don’t name fish either.

“Well, I’d buy you a K-Car A nice Reliant automobile”

Take a wild guess at which one of our animals got this lyric.

“If I had a million dollars I’d build a tree-fort in our yard”

Now this one’s a little convoluted, so play close attention. We started at tree, but that’s no name for an animal. Then we looked at tree genera, but none of those were good, so we switched over to parts of trees. Xylem, and bark didn’t seem good. I was flipping through my tree book and came to the maples. You know those little helicopter seeds that come from maple trees? Those are called samaras. As soon as I saw it I knew that was it. Samara just felt right.

“If I had a million dollars you could help. It wouldn’t be that hard.”

The little lizard is missing his rear left foot, and it seemed like he would need a little help to get around, so we went with that. Plus, it always reminds me of the Beatles song, which is fun.

“Maybe we could put a little tiny fridge in there somewhere.”

This last one is a little complicated as well, though not as much as Samara. We knew we couldn’t name a cat “Fridge”. That’s just mean. So we started looking at refrigerator brands. Kayla found Lynx, which manufactures refrigerators for outdoor areas like boats and patios. Lynx is a type of cat, plus I found him outside. Perfect!

Bones was already named when Kayla bought him, and you can’t just change a horse’s name, but after thinking about it, it fits with the theme. It’s a little farther down the list, but life is imperfect.

“Well, I’d buy you John Merrick’s remains All them crazy elephant bones”

Kayla got Foxy in Florida from her ex-boyfriend. They just picked her name because she looked like a fox pup.

Eventually we will get a turtle, and his name will be the Fort half of “tree-fort”. I’m excited to see what get’s stuck with the name “pre-wrapped sausage”. Maybe we’ll get a pig.

How do you choose names for your animals?