Difficult names

[Mrwoofington]

DC keep suggesting lots of long names for new ddog or names that may be difficult for other family members to say (not native language names) - though they are lovely names.

Have you regretted your dog name? Or ended up changing it because it was a PITA?

There's one same we all agree we like, and is an easy name, one syllable which I think would be helpful since I imagine I'm going to be saying it till in blue in the face, but it begins with the same sounds as one of the DCs names and im worried the dog would get confused. For example - a dog called Shai And a DD called Shannon

What do you think?

[labazsisgoingmad]

the dog we adopted was called spot which i did not like so we called him patch but he now is called paddy paddy cats or paddy cakes. he only gets patch when he is very naughty

[missbattenburg]

Dogs respond best to two syllable names - especially if they have a definite sounds in them, like s and t.

e.g. Betsy works better than Cherry (from a dog pov)

However, most dogs end up with several nicknames and they adapt well enough to them - though it's worth keeping one specific command/name for recall.

This also means most long names end up much shorter. E.g. Lord Marmaduke ends up as Duke or Marmy or Lordy or something not related at all.

[Theredjellybean]

It is more important the tone you use not the word itself.

So marmaduke said with higher pitch happy tone, dog will hear "this is good"

Marmaduke yelled in angry voice dog hears "scary bad"

We have a Shakespeare theme with all our ddogs.. Now have Ddog 3,4 and 5

So currently we have hamlet, lorenzo and caliban

Previous two were... Desdemona and duncan

[adaline]

Ours is Archie.

But he rarely ever gets called that. He has a variety of nicknames - most of which have nothing to do with his actual name

[Theredjellybean]

Though I did want goneril from. King Lear but dp was... "mmm imagine shouting that.. It sounds like gonnorhea

[Mrwoofington]

missbattenburg why are two syllables better? I thought one would be easier to get out before the Instruction

Love that the NNs aren't related. No idea what the shortened versions of the names the DC have in mind would be.

[missbattenburg]

Two syllable are less likely to sound like a command. For some reason many of the typical cue words are single syllable:

Sit
Stay
Down
Heel
Etc

Plus there is a greater chance of single syllable names sounding like other words - eg. "That's what I said!" Could be heard as "blah blah blah Fred" by a dog whose name is Fred. Dogs tend to hear the final sounds only when we speak longer words or sentences.

Two syllables helps the dog by giving a bit more information as part of the sound, by which they can discriminate from other noises but without being overly complex.

This is not a hard and fast rule and many dogs do well with shorter or longer names. Plus you could argue "That's what I said!" Also sounds like "blah blah Alfred" so it's not totally clear cut.

I seem to recall a study that indicated two syllable names dogs had better recall and suggested some of the reasons above but it was somewhat limited in scope etc.