On the Process of Naming A Dog

As I just blogged, we got a dog.  The name he came with was fine, but didn't grab any of us, so in the week between our (surprising) decision to adopt him and his adoption day, we had to come up with a new name for him.  Our family group chat with the seven of us LIT UP with name options being tossed out day and night.  Everyone was passionate about the names they loved and the names they hated.  As I often find our family group chat, it was hilarious.  

Since our Shadow was a black dog and had a name connected with his color, I thought we should do the same for this dog.  I tossed out Pepper, Coffee, Stormy and the like.  They were all quickly vetoed.  Among some of the names that were suggested are these:

Maverick
Rooster
Moose
Bear
Asher
Chewbacca (Chewy)
Kronk
Snuffleupagus (Snuffy)
Augie
Zeke
Dwight
Ron Swanson
Duke

This is an incredibly small representation of the names suggested in our group text.  Some I can't share here, some were just ridiculous, and some were good but never took off with enough people.  If I had agreed to Kronk (from the Disney movie character), that's what his name would be.  At some point, one of the texts said it was a done deal because "we have a child majority and dad".  Apparently they thought mom was a lame duck in the veto department, but they quickly learned that since mom would be doing the majority of the work, mom would not be sounding like an idiot calling a crazy name out the back door. About mid week, one of the kids created a google poll to put an end to it all, but it proved inconclusive. Later in the week, we tossed out two names in the category of "Names we wanted to use for our children but didn't - and added Augie (Augustine), and Zeke (Ezekiel).  

And then. . .my husband happened to poll the second graders at our school, and one of the names they tossed out was Duke.  When he shared the names in the group chat, he also shared that Duke was his dad's childhood dog's name.  And the rest is history.  We all thought Duke was a regal name, and we all very much loved the Papa connection.  

And so we named him Duke. And while he doesn't exactly have regal behavior yet, we think he'll get there.  And we'll always love that our crazy dog name discussion ended with loving thoughts about Papa.