I’ve never named inanimate objects, other than soft toys, never seen the need. I know manny people do though. In my mind if it’s living it gets a name, if it’s not it doesn’t get a proper noun just a normal noun. I think I may be odd as most people seem to name their car etc.
Wouldn’t say ‘most people’, just a certain type. I know a European lady who tags / names hers, but can’t think of many other Aussies in my part of ‘town’ who do. Certain families I suspect. A ‘hereditary’ trait. Grin.
Like you, Tasmin, I've never been much of a namer, save for people and pets. (Don't get me started on the penchant for naming rooms and buildings after wealthy donors! I know that's a different topic, but gah!)
We bought our former Volvo station wagon from a woman who told us it's name was "Sven." My best friend in high school called her VW Bug "Moose." Close friends here at home are namers and word-players (eg: sea-star for sister). The practice always makes me smile but my brain just doesn't work that way.
Sven is the perfect name for a Volvo! And hmmm, naming rooms after wealthy donors, yes, I can understand how that happens, but just thinking about it we grew up with many ostentatiously-named rooms in our house (for fun, not showy-offy)! The sitting room became known as the library once a whole load of shelves for books landed in there, and these days it's called the 'snug'. The spare bedroom is known as 'the ______ suite' after the name of the father/son builders (it's not a suite - LOL!!!!) and the room that used to have the piano in was 'the music room'.
Ooh, that's so interesting - I name absolutely everything! In front of me now are a teapot (okay, this one isn't named, but the first teapot I owned was called Hamish), and my electric egg boiler, who is known as Boily McBoilface. 🤣
YES! That was so funny - the competition to name the British Antarctic Survey vessel! I’d voted for ‘Growler’, but of course most of the UK population had got on board with that one bonkers suggestion of ‘Boaty McBoatface’ and, well, it got about a gasquillion votes! 🤣
In our household we use that naming pattern for an inordinate number of everyday things. We’re pretty Bonkers McBonkersface around here, Beth!
I think of all the posts you've written, this one is my absolute favourite. I love the idea of naming things. The cottage here has always been called (uninspiringly) House, by me. But I have real conversations with it and it shares its humble existence with me. Our matchbox townhouse is called Balfour because that's the street it lives in. The beach we swim at is actually officially called Millington's Beach after my grandfather (long story) but we always call it the Front Beach, because back in the day, it was in the front of my grandparents' house.
Mum's Mini was always the Mini-Car, my first car was a Renault - Rene! And of course our dogs - so many names but its the nicknames I love. Mini Moocher, HazzBazz, Tagalot, Fang, HazzleBazzle, Feofifofum, Tararaboomdeay and so forth and naturally the dogs knew these other names!
Mum's walker (bright red with shiny black wheels) is called Lifesaver when I've had to use it.
Oh, such kind words - very many thanks, Prue! I love the name 'House'. We call our house 'Chateau Snaps', just in fun - it is tiny, tired 1950s-built, and nothing like a chateau - but it makes us laugh! And it's great to refer to a house by its location. In the family the house that I lived in before I met Jim was actually called by its street name, and my London flat was referred to by the name of the area (the street name was named after a local bigwig with an inconveniently-long name).
HazzleBazzle? Tararaboomdeay?! FABULOUS! We once brought up two orphan twin lambs called 'Little' and 'Often' because that was their feeding pattern. Jim would often call his dog 'The Beard', because, well, he had a beard (the dog, that is).
I have a sturdy aluminum 4 foot folding step ladder I named “Jack”, after the boss I stole it from when he refused to pay me for a painting job.
He was never around much so it was usually me and his son who was doing all the painting. “No Painting Jack” we called him. I’d have to chase him down to a local pub every Friday to get my weekly check. The last time I found him at the pub, he said he couldn’t pay me. Without saying a word, I walked out, went back to the job site, packed up my painting tools, and as I was driving off I saw the ladder looking forlorn in a corner outside the as yet unoccupied house I’d just finished painting. I had used that little ladder for this whole job. I stopped, picked it up and put it in my van, and could almost hear it sigh with relief.
I still have that ladder here twenty-seven years later and whenever I ask my husband what he did with “Jack” he knows exactly ‘who’ I’m talking about.
Oh, I’m so sorry that you didn’t get paid for that job, and I’m goosepimplingly proud that you adopted Jack for your own! Gail, this is a glorious tale!
I used to help clean the church, and there would always be more volunteers than tools available, so I used to take our ‘Henry’ vacuum cleaner with me for the job. The church had an identical one - so one was labelled ‘Holy Henry’ and the other - ours - was ‘Henry Snaps’!
It’s always really obvious to me when an inanimate object needs to be named, whether it’s male or female. One of my cars was male, the other three female. My brother’s cars - hmmm, all but one was male, but his current one has a girl’s name. And with childhood toys, too - well, some bears are boys, some bears are girls. But we always KNOW, don’t we - we don’t have to think about it! It’s funny! x
“Holy Henry” and “Henry Snaps”! This gave me a giggle!
I once gave a hammer to my youngest son when he was a pre-teen. I was trying to teach him the value of caring for his things. He named it “Fred”.
One day I asked him if I could borrow ‘Fred’. He said he didn’t know where he was, and couldn’t find him. (Sigh). A few months later I found Fred laying out in the yard. He was pretty rusty.
I shoulda known then it was to be an indication of how this particular son was going to be as an adult.
Colgate! Alan! Tango! Not possible to love this post more, Rebecca!
This is such a quirky and delightful riff on British eccentricities and I do of course have my own set, always having referred to random dogs as "woofs" and I used to call my old blue Echo car "The Rocket." (The cat's fav resting place on the bottom shelf of a moveable butcher's block has long since been dubbed the Cattanooga Choo-Choo, lol!) Patti Smith has entire conversations with her toaster and other inanimate objects in the M Train, I believe which I found charming. Such a whimsical read this was, Rebecca and hope you are soon feeling 100% again!
Oh, those names are brilliant, Sue! I love the name ‘The Rocket’ for your car - it’s reminded me of an elderly friend’s runabout which she called ‘The Purple Peril’! Fabulous!
And Cattanooga Choo-Choo is hilarious and very fitting! Some of our furniture has names - thanks to IKEA we have ‘Big Billy’ and ‘Little Billy’ (very useful to distinguish whenever we’re trying to find anything that might have been stashed in a bookcase with doors and immediately forgotten!), and for some reason - not IKEA-product-name related, our TV stand is called ‘Dylan’. 🤷♀️
You made me laugh out loud twice this morning, Mrs. Snaps: A camper-van named Shackleton and fluorescent racing stripes on a tortoise. Ha ha ha! But I am so sorry to hear you are using sticks!! A pain in the arse, if you ask me, but I, myself, am reduced to rolling my walker in front of me any time I leave the house now, too. Falling is NOT an option at my age. Thanks for such a cute, entertaining post this morning!
Walkers are great, though - and it’s ALWAYS an excellent plan to try to avoid falling where possible! I don’t fall, but just feel I might, which is enough for me to want Whizz to lean on. I’m sure it’s temporary!
I’ve just remembered another tortoise - a lonely old chap called Felix, who would stalk that garden of the place I lived in Germany. He had a real thing for footwear, and would proceed to - how can I put this in PG terms? - have adult relationships with any he came across, whether its own was wearing at the time or had simply abandoned it in the garden by mistake.
I loved this post, Rebecca. My kids and I have named inanimate objects, and have nicknames for things, too: my son's name for his vacuum when he was 4-ish, was Boom-boom. My daughter's cars' names are/were Opal (current car, white Hyundia), Connie (a white Subaru, her first car), and Charlie (blue Toyota, 2nd car). I used to call chocolate milk "cold hot chocolate" and still do. My Mini Cooper is, well, Cooper, and should I ever get a white cat or dog, its name would be Cooper. ❤️
‘Cold hot chocolate’ is just the perfect name for chocolate milk - actually, it’s a BETTER name for chocolate milk than ‘chocolate milk’! I love ‘Boom-boom’ for the vacuum cleaner! When we were kids the washing machine as the ‘washdi sheen’, and cup of tea was ‘cupli tea’. 🫖
Hoping that Whizz and Dash aren’t needed for too much longer! A post that is both practical and entertaining. It’s so funny how families and brains label things, how we see and think about things. Very cool.
I love Morris Minors and wish I'd had one. My brother-in-law was a master car mechanic, specializing in restoring Corvettes. He told me that Morris Minors were his favorite car to work on because the motors were simple and easy to navigate without taking the whole danged car apart. Unfortunately, they are rare on the west coast of the U.S. I only saw a couple in Santa Cruz and fell in love.
They’re lovely cars, aren’t they? We had a family of them for a while - Mum had a green Morris Traveller (the ones with the timber frame at the back, and double back doors), and my brother had a white one at the same time! Mine was a four-door saloon, but looked the same at the front as theirs. We don’t have any Morris Minors in the family any more - I wish I still had Posy!
I always thought they were so cute, and (I hope this doesn't offend) a bit like a cartoon car that Minnie Mouse would drive, all round and friendly looking. Not like these gladiator-esque models coming out of wherever that have headlight designs that strike fear into other drivers. Mayhem on the highway. I want a friendly little car that a mechanic will swoon over because it's got a quality motor that's easy to work on.
I’m not good at naming cars— I give them names but never call them by their names. The only one which stuck was “Dusty,” whom I drove when my daughter was small. She called him by name every time!
Everything I've just learned about your quirky, delightful practice of naming inanimate objects, fits you to a tee, Rebecca! Such a joy to read! I've never been that person, but I've giggled more than once with those who are.
You'll remember that our robo-vac came with the name Rosie. We inherited a fiddle leaf fig from the same person, so Big Fig lives with us now. We kept the adopted names but it didn't spill over into other naming habits.
That Morris Minor -- omigosh, it's stunning! What brand is the camper van? It's so similar to the Westfalia and makes me long to have one again.
Your names, whether for animate or inanimate friends, are imaginative and fun, Rebecca. :)
Awww thanks, Elizabeth! I’m so glad you enjoyed this post! Rosie and Big Fig - wonderful!
Our campervan is a converted VW Transporter - so it was a van first of all, rather than being factory-fitted by VW as a camper like the California is. He (Shackleton!) is absolutely brilliant, and absolutely perfect for us - even though he’s very small and Jim and I are both very tall!
I have never named objects, only people and pets. My mum named our Morris Minor Traveller (which, like you, I still miss) Mo. I think things like this are fascinating:
"Note: In a delightful circular reference, the wreck of Shackleton’s Endurance was found three years ago – on the hundredth anniversary of Shackleton’s burial, in fact – in the Weddell Sea."
Thanks, Terry! I love that your family’s Traveller was called Mo! Mum and my brother each had a Traveller, actually - one was green, the other was Old English white. Absolutely beautiful cars!
I’ve never named inanimate objects, other than soft toys, never seen the need. I know manny people do though. In my mind if it’s living it gets a name, if it’s not it doesn’t get a proper noun just a normal noun. I think I may be odd as most people seem to name their car etc.
Wouldn’t say ‘most people’, just a certain type. I know a European lady who tags / names hers, but can’t think of many other Aussies in my part of ‘town’ who do. Certain families I suspect. A ‘hereditary’ trait. Grin.
Like you, Tasmin, I've never been much of a namer, save for people and pets. (Don't get me started on the penchant for naming rooms and buildings after wealthy donors! I know that's a different topic, but gah!)
We bought our former Volvo station wagon from a woman who told us it's name was "Sven." My best friend in high school called her VW Bug "Moose." Close friends here at home are namers and word-players (eg: sea-star for sister). The practice always makes me smile but my brain just doesn't work that way.
Sven is the perfect name for a Volvo! And hmmm, naming rooms after wealthy donors, yes, I can understand how that happens, but just thinking about it we grew up with many ostentatiously-named rooms in our house (for fun, not showy-offy)! The sitting room became known as the library once a whole load of shelves for books landed in there, and these days it's called the 'snug'. The spare bedroom is known as 'the ______ suite' after the name of the father/son builders (it's not a suite - LOL!!!!) and the room that used to have the piano in was 'the music room'.
I'm sure it runs in families! x
Ooh, that's so interesting - I name absolutely everything! In front of me now are a teapot (okay, this one isn't named, but the first teapot I owned was called Hamish), and my electric egg boiler, who is known as Boily McBoilface. 🤣
That famous British naming system. Boaty McBoatface etc. 😃 (Boily McBoilface. Sigh. (Grin.))
YES! That was so funny - the competition to name the British Antarctic Survey vessel! I’d voted for ‘Growler’, but of course most of the UK population had got on board with that one bonkers suggestion of ‘Boaty McBoatface’ and, well, it got about a gasquillion votes! 🤣
In our household we use that naming pattern for an inordinate number of everyday things. We’re pretty Bonkers McBonkersface around here, Beth!
I think of all the posts you've written, this one is my absolute favourite. I love the idea of naming things. The cottage here has always been called (uninspiringly) House, by me. But I have real conversations with it and it shares its humble existence with me. Our matchbox townhouse is called Balfour because that's the street it lives in. The beach we swim at is actually officially called Millington's Beach after my grandfather (long story) but we always call it the Front Beach, because back in the day, it was in the front of my grandparents' house.
Mum's Mini was always the Mini-Car, my first car was a Renault - Rene! And of course our dogs - so many names but its the nicknames I love. Mini Moocher, HazzBazz, Tagalot, Fang, HazzleBazzle, Feofifofum, Tararaboomdeay and so forth and naturally the dogs knew these other names!
Mum's walker (bright red with shiny black wheels) is called Lifesaver when I've had to use it.
I could go on but that'll do for starters.
I LOVE the names for Jim's hard drives!!!
Hope you're on the mend. XXXX
Tararaboomdeay!!! Aussie names are often shortened versions. I love that HazzleBazzle would be shortened to HazzBazz. Gorgeous tags (names).
Basil, the Aussie dog we kept for several months, quickly became Baz, Bazzy Boy, the Bazzinator, and more! 😅
HAH! Isn't it just brilliant when nicknames end up waaaaaay longer than the original name?! I love this!
Wonderful!
Oh, such kind words - very many thanks, Prue! I love the name 'House'. We call our house 'Chateau Snaps', just in fun - it is tiny, tired 1950s-built, and nothing like a chateau - but it makes us laugh! And it's great to refer to a house by its location. In the family the house that I lived in before I met Jim was actually called by its street name, and my London flat was referred to by the name of the area (the street name was named after a local bigwig with an inconveniently-long name).
HazzleBazzle? Tararaboomdeay?! FABULOUS! We once brought up two orphan twin lambs called 'Little' and 'Often' because that was their feeding pattern. Jim would often call his dog 'The Beard', because, well, he had a beard (the dog, that is).
I can so identify with this post!!
I have a sturdy aluminum 4 foot folding step ladder I named “Jack”, after the boss I stole it from when he refused to pay me for a painting job.
He was never around much so it was usually me and his son who was doing all the painting. “No Painting Jack” we called him. I’d have to chase him down to a local pub every Friday to get my weekly check. The last time I found him at the pub, he said he couldn’t pay me. Without saying a word, I walked out, went back to the job site, packed up my painting tools, and as I was driving off I saw the ladder looking forlorn in a corner outside the as yet unoccupied house I’d just finished painting. I had used that little ladder for this whole job. I stopped, picked it up and put it in my van, and could almost hear it sigh with relief.
I still have that ladder here twenty-seven years later and whenever I ask my husband what he did with “Jack” he knows exactly ‘who’ I’m talking about.
Oh, I’m so sorry that you didn’t get paid for that job, and I’m goosepimplingly proud that you adopted Jack for your own! Gail, this is a glorious tale!
I used to help clean the church, and there would always be more volunteers than tools available, so I used to take our ‘Henry’ vacuum cleaner with me for the job. The church had an identical one - so one was labelled ‘Holy Henry’ and the other - ours - was ‘Henry Snaps’!
It’s always really obvious to me when an inanimate object needs to be named, whether it’s male or female. One of my cars was male, the other three female. My brother’s cars - hmmm, all but one was male, but his current one has a girl’s name. And with childhood toys, too - well, some bears are boys, some bears are girls. But we always KNOW, don’t we - we don’t have to think about it! It’s funny! x
“Holy Henry” and “Henry Snaps”! This gave me a giggle!
I once gave a hammer to my youngest son when he was a pre-teen. I was trying to teach him the value of caring for his things. He named it “Fred”.
One day I asked him if I could borrow ‘Fred’. He said he didn’t know where he was, and couldn’t find him. (Sigh). A few months later I found Fred laying out in the yard. He was pretty rusty.
I shoulda known then it was to be an indication of how this particular son was going to be as an adult.
Alas, poor Fred. 😒
Oh, poor Fred! I'm glad you found him, though! x
I just named my new vacuum cleaner 'Sucky'. Don't judge me.
Can't think of a better name!
Oh, that’s PERFECT, Margreet! My parents’ vacuum cleaner is called ‘Jaws’, because the brand is called ‘Shark’! 🦈
Colgate! Alan! Tango! Not possible to love this post more, Rebecca!
This is such a quirky and delightful riff on British eccentricities and I do of course have my own set, always having referred to random dogs as "woofs" and I used to call my old blue Echo car "The Rocket." (The cat's fav resting place on the bottom shelf of a moveable butcher's block has long since been dubbed the Cattanooga Choo-Choo, lol!) Patti Smith has entire conversations with her toaster and other inanimate objects in the M Train, I believe which I found charming. Such a whimsical read this was, Rebecca and hope you are soon feeling 100% again!
Oh, those names are brilliant, Sue! I love the name ‘The Rocket’ for your car - it’s reminded me of an elderly friend’s runabout which she called ‘The Purple Peril’! Fabulous!
And Cattanooga Choo-Choo is hilarious and very fitting! Some of our furniture has names - thanks to IKEA we have ‘Big Billy’ and ‘Little Billy’ (very useful to distinguish whenever we’re trying to find anything that might have been stashed in a bookcase with doors and immediately forgotten!), and for some reason - not IKEA-product-name related, our TV stand is called ‘Dylan’. 🤷♀️
🤣
You made me laugh out loud twice this morning, Mrs. Snaps: A camper-van named Shackleton and fluorescent racing stripes on a tortoise. Ha ha ha! But I am so sorry to hear you are using sticks!! A pain in the arse, if you ask me, but I, myself, am reduced to rolling my walker in front of me any time I leave the house now, too. Falling is NOT an option at my age. Thanks for such a cute, entertaining post this morning!
Walkers are great, though - and it’s ALWAYS an excellent plan to try to avoid falling where possible! I don’t fall, but just feel I might, which is enough for me to want Whizz to lean on. I’m sure it’s temporary!
I’ve just remembered another tortoise - a lonely old chap called Felix, who would stalk that garden of the place I lived in Germany. He had a real thing for footwear, and would proceed to - how can I put this in PG terms? - have adult relationships with any he came across, whether its own was wearing at the time or had simply abandoned it in the garden by mistake.
Oh that is just too funny! Poor old misnamed Felix. They should have called him Impudicus. "Adult relations". ha ha ha
Ooooooh, I’ve learned a new word - that’s brilliant, Sharron! He was pretty gross, was Felix. Or perhaps misunderstood…..?
No, definitely gross.
I loved this post, Rebecca. My kids and I have named inanimate objects, and have nicknames for things, too: my son's name for his vacuum when he was 4-ish, was Boom-boom. My daughter's cars' names are/were Opal (current car, white Hyundia), Connie (a white Subaru, her first car), and Charlie (blue Toyota, 2nd car). I used to call chocolate milk "cold hot chocolate" and still do. My Mini Cooper is, well, Cooper, and should I ever get a white cat or dog, its name would be Cooper. ❤️
‘Cold hot chocolate’ is just the perfect name for chocolate milk - actually, it’s a BETTER name for chocolate milk than ‘chocolate milk’! I love ‘Boom-boom’ for the vacuum cleaner! When we were kids the washing machine as the ‘washdi sheen’, and cup of tea was ‘cupli tea’. 🫖
❤️ washdi sheen. ❤️ ❤️ cupli tea 😁
😁
Hoping that Whizz and Dash aren’t needed for too much longer! A post that is both practical and entertaining. It’s so funny how families and brains label things, how we see and think about things. Very cool.
Thanks, Beth! I’m sure that Whizz and Dash are only on temporary contract - all will be well! xxx
I love Morris Minors and wish I'd had one. My brother-in-law was a master car mechanic, specializing in restoring Corvettes. He told me that Morris Minors were his favorite car to work on because the motors were simple and easy to navigate without taking the whole danged car apart. Unfortunately, they are rare on the west coast of the U.S. I only saw a couple in Santa Cruz and fell in love.
They’re lovely cars, aren’t they? We had a family of them for a while - Mum had a green Morris Traveller (the ones with the timber frame at the back, and double back doors), and my brother had a white one at the same time! Mine was a four-door saloon, but looked the same at the front as theirs. We don’t have any Morris Minors in the family any more - I wish I still had Posy!
I always thought they were so cute, and (I hope this doesn't offend) a bit like a cartoon car that Minnie Mouse would drive, all round and friendly looking. Not like these gladiator-esque models coming out of wherever that have headlight designs that strike fear into other drivers. Mayhem on the highway. I want a friendly little car that a mechanic will swoon over because it's got a quality motor that's easy to work on.
I’m not good at naming cars— I give them names but never call them by their names. The only one which stuck was “Dusty,” whom I drove when my daughter was small. She called him by name every time!
Awwww, I love the sound of ‘Dusty’, Kerry!
Everything I've just learned about your quirky, delightful practice of naming inanimate objects, fits you to a tee, Rebecca! Such a joy to read! I've never been that person, but I've giggled more than once with those who are.
You'll remember that our robo-vac came with the name Rosie. We inherited a fiddle leaf fig from the same person, so Big Fig lives with us now. We kept the adopted names but it didn't spill over into other naming habits.
That Morris Minor -- omigosh, it's stunning! What brand is the camper van? It's so similar to the Westfalia and makes me long to have one again.
Your names, whether for animate or inanimate friends, are imaginative and fun, Rebecca. :)
Awww thanks, Elizabeth! I’m so glad you enjoyed this post! Rosie and Big Fig - wonderful!
Our campervan is a converted VW Transporter - so it was a van first of all, rather than being factory-fitted by VW as a camper like the California is. He (Shackleton!) is absolutely brilliant, and absolutely perfect for us - even though he’s very small and Jim and I are both very tall!
I have never named objects, only people and pets. My mum named our Morris Minor Traveller (which, like you, I still miss) Mo. I think things like this are fascinating:
"Note: In a delightful circular reference, the wreck of Shackleton’s Endurance was found three years ago – on the hundredth anniversary of Shackleton’s burial, in fact – in the Weddell Sea."
A delightful post, as always.
Thanks, Terry! I love that your family’s Traveller was called Mo! Mum and my brother each had a Traveller, actually - one was green, the other was Old English white. Absolutely beautiful cars!