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Hernando Today

When Naming Pets, Use A Fresh Approach

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By RICHARD CREED, Media General News Service

Published: February 10, 2008

Every once in a while I come across someone who has a dog or cat with a leg missing. Quite often, the owner indulges in a bit of gentle humor by naming the pet Tripod.

My guess is that pets named Tripod number in the hundreds, maybe thousands, across the country, so whatever freshness and cleverness the name may have once had has been dulled by repetition.

What we need is a fresh approach. Such an approach occurred to me a while back when a female dog of undetermined pedigree came into the possession of my wife and me. This dog is, in my estimation, the finest dog ever to walk on three legs.

She had been struck by a hit-and-run driver and left injured beside the road. A Good Samaritan found her and took her to a veterinarian. The vet was able to save her, but only by amputating one of her front legs at the shoulder.

She was an adult when we adopted her, and already had a name, Polly, short for Pollyanna. It seemed to me that here was an opportunity for an inventive, gently irreverent name.

Try as I would, however, my wife would not hear of renaming her Hopalong.

Polly joined another dog, Pie, short for Piebald, in our household. Now, when people ask how many dogs we have, I say proudly, "We have one-and-three-quarter dogs."

Then there was the time we adopted a female cat that had been turned in to the Humane Society. A car had struck and injured her, and some fraternity boys at Wake Forest University had taken her in and made her their frat-house pet.

When the end of the school year approached, the boys turned her in, hoping that someone would give her a permanent home. She was a beautiful little calico, back in good health, and had all her legs.

We adopted her, but this time it was my wife who insisted on changing her name, so she became Sassy. What a shame. I so wanted her to keep the name the fraternity boys had given her, Speed Bump.

Closed captions on television are useful for people who are hard of hearing or want to mute the sound for some other reason. Some of us use them with the sound still on to make sure that we understand what someone is saying by reading the text on the screen. Quite often, as anyone who uses closed captioning regularly is sure to notice, the closed captions don't match what someone is saying. That is especially true during live programs, when the transcriber has to produce the captions as fast as possible while someone is speaking.

For instance, during one of the debates among candidates for the Democratic nomination for president, John Edwards made a reference to Teddy Roosevelt.

What the hapless transcriber heard, and what appeared on the screen, was "Teddy round velocity."

From a Mount Airy reader: "Are you familiar with the use of concerning to mean causing concern? I've been noticing it more and more on CNBC (the financial channel) in the past six months, but maybe it's been around a lot longer than that.

"I find it confusing and disconcerting: 'Wachovia issued a concerning report' or 'That news is concerning.' Concerning what? I ask.

"Neither of my admittedly old dictionaries lists such a use for concerning. In fact, my American Heritage is not really happy with the use of the participle as an introductory preposition either, as in, 'Concerning your third request, we feel that further funding is unnecessary.'"

I can find no justification for using concerning as an adjective meaning causing concern.

As for concerning used as a preposition, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary traces to the 15th century its meaning of relating to or regarding. Its longevity notwithstanding, I find it stuffy. I would prefer "as for" or, depending on the context, "about."

The reader also wrote: "Speaking of CNBC, there's always this: 'At this point in time, XYZ is not building flat-screens, but will do so going forward.' Could they build them going backward?

"And the redundant 'at this point in time' has been on my 'S' (scold) list for decades." Mine too.

Richard Creed is a retired Journal editor. He can be reached at richcreed@triad.rr.com.

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