We Named the Monkey "Jack"

Barbossa: Why thank ye, Jack.
Jack Sparrow: You're welcome.

Barbossa: Not you. We named the monkey Jack.

—Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl

This is where a human character and an animal companion share a name for some reason. This can work one of two ways:

1. We Named The Monkey "Jack": The animal was named after its human counterpart, either to honor a fallen comrade or (more likely) as a subtle Take That against an enemy.
2. We Named The Dog "Indiana": The human was named for the animal, or takes a nickname (or false identity) from the name given to a beloved pet or other animal companion.

Examples of We Named the Monkey "Jack" include:

Examples of Type 1

Anime and Manga

• Mr. Soichiro, Kyoko's dog in Maison Ikkoku, is named after her deceased husband. Unusually, he responded to the name "Soichiro" even when her husband was alive.
• Nanami the cow from Revolutionary Girl Utena. Not only does Anthy name a cow Nanami, in the episode "Cowbell of Happiness", Nanami the human turns into a cow. It's that kind of series.
  • She later names a chicken Nanami, as well. It's strongly implied that all Nanami's animal-related issues are a result of Anthy's passive-aggressive retribution for her cruel prank in episode 3. She is at witch, after all.
• Subverted in Wolf's Rain. After feeding a stray dog, a girl named Leara meets a boy who says the dog's called Toboe. She's confused when he later calls himself Toboe. He claims this is because he and the dog are so alike. It's probably not spoileriffic to reveal that the dog is actually a wolf, and that the boy and wolf share the same name because they are one and the same. When Leara finds out the truth she freaks out, to his dismay.
• Ichigo of Tokyo Mew Mew names her fluffy mascot, Masha, after her boyfriend, Masaya.
• In light novels of Zero no Tsukaima around 9th volume, Saito buys a horse and names it Louise. Needless to say that she didn't take it well. He was forced to change the name.
• Used for a dub-only Continuity Nod in the English dub of Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Judai and co. meet a trained dueling monkey named Wheeler; in the original series dub, Joey Wheeler was frequently called (as an insult) "a dueling monkey."
  • In the dub of the original Yu-Gi-Oh, Mana's bird is named Anzu, referencing the Japanese name of Tea Gardner. The bird is unnamed in the Japanese version.
• A variant occurs in Moon Light Lady. Suzuna's stuffed teddy bear is named Mizuna, and unbeknownst to her shares its name with Suzuna's twin sister.
• In Futari Ecchi, Rika's cat is named Yamada, after her boyfriend.
• The main character of Kimi wa Petto first decides to keep Takeshi as a 'pet' because he reminds her of her old dog—so, in reference to said dog, she calls him "Momo". Even on their wedding day...

Comics

• In Cerebus the Aardvark, Cerebus becomes a shepherd and names one of the sheep "Elrod". It is unclear whether he's doing it because the sheep annoys him like Elrod used to, or if (after all these years) he misses Elrod (as well as his other old acquaintances). Outliving everyone you knew can have that effect on you.
• Scrooge McDuck named his horse after his Fiery Redhead sister Hortense.
• In the Gargoyles comics, it's revealed that Mary and Finella name their horse after Magus. "Something about his face," Mary says.
• In Scott Pilgrim, Ramona has a cat that shares the name Gideon with her most recent ex-boyfriend. It is a source of much speculation why the cat is named thus, especially due to all the Magical Realism of the story. Turns out, it was just her way of getting over breaking up with him.
• Angel's dragon and Groo's pegasus in Angel: After the Fall are both named after Cordelia Chase.
• Dori Seda had given her friend Tony a cat, which he called Doro. When she got a dog from him, she called him Tona. (Her Real Life and her comics tended to overlap.)
• In the Farscape comics, Scorpius has acquired a small pet lizard-like creature whom he calls John.

Film

• Trope Namer: Captain Barbossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean series has a pet monkey named Jack. It is implied that this was a barb against his rival, Captain Jack Sparrow.
• In Little Shop of Horrors, the protagonist names an evil alien plant after his sweetheart. It's meant to be in a nice way, as he first believes the plant is a previously undiscovered (terrestrial) breed.
• Though not an animal, the man who discovers the killer asteroid in Armageddon names it after his bickering wife ("She's a vicious life-sucking bitch from which there is no escape").
• In the Casper movie, Dibbs mentions to Carrigan's ghost that with the treasure, he will buy among other things, a little dog named "Carrigan" ("a bitch, just like you!"). Then Carrigan flings him out the window.
• In Payback, Porter's ex-girlfriend named her dog after him. This becomes useful later, when a man comes looking for Porter the man, and she takes him to Porter the dog, and has the dog attack.
• In Fierce Creatures, Rollo Lee is placed in charge of the Marwood Zoo and one of the zookeepers named a lemur Rollo as a show of respect. Which leads to a bit of hilarity when the human Rollo and the lemur Rollo are together with the "Pronoid" Vince McCain.
• Marilyn Rexroth in Intolerable Cruelty names her dog Howard after one of her ex-husbands.
• In one of the unused scripts for Highlander the Source, Duncan has a monkey named after his cousin Connor.

Literature

• In Woad to Wuin, Apropos discovers that he has named his horse Entipy, after a woman he knows.
• In Rudyard Kipling's arctic story Quiquern Kotuko the young Inuit hunter has a sled dog named Kotuko. The story implies that this is common practice.
• In Sandy Mitchell's Warhammer 40,000 novel Scourge the Heretic, an undercover woman has to quickly name an imaginary pony. She calls it "Mordechai" - and then wonders, because she has been told that it's obvious she's in love with the real Mordechai and she had even started to wonder if it were true.^[1]
• In the novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, the main character names his cat Noboru Wataya after his brother-in-law, whom he hates.
• Richard Sharpe named his dog Nosey, on the grounds that he'd spent fifteen years taking orders from the bastard, so he might as well give a few.
• In The Babysitters Club, after the Thomas kids' collie is put to sleep, Shannon Kilbourne gives David Michael a puppy. When Kristy prompts him with "What do you say?" David Michael replies "I say let's name her Shannon!"
• In one of the The Witcher novels, Friendly Neighborhood Vampire and Technical Pacifist Regis names the party's donkey "Drakul". Jaskier, who is narrating the story, says that Regis refused to explain the name, saying its "an untranslatable play on words". One possible explanation is "dracul" is Romanian for dragon or devil, which would count as a Genius Bonus since it's also the origin of the word Dracula.
• In the Doctor Who Expanded Universe novel The Last Dodo, the Doctor names the titular bird Dorothea. He doesn't explain why, but Dorothea Chaplet was a former companion, usually called "Dodo".
• In Douglas Adams's unfinished Dirk Gently novel The Salmon of Doubt, Dirk is hired to discover the name of a client's late husband's small dog, which turns out to be "Kierkegaard"; the guy was writing a biography, and sometimes just really needed an excuse to yell "Shut up, Kierkegaard!"
• As pets can seem a lot like people when you're nine, Peter Hatcher's naming of his dog at the end of Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing might count. He named his new puppy "Turtle", after the pet turtle his little brother had swallowed.
• In Iron Dawn, a veteran of the Trojan War who'd fought under Achilles names his horse after the wife of the Trojan hero Hector. The implication is that the old soldier can really hold a grudge, as he named it that as a snub: he's riding his enemy's wife.
• A rural French tradition according to Malevil. Since the The French Revolution ranchers have named their livestock with nobility titles as a generation-spanning Take That against their distant ancestors' oppressors. Namely at Malevil, there is a Baronne, Comtesse, Marquise, and Princesse.
• In Artemis Fowl The Time Paradox, in a combination of We Named the Monkey "Jack" and Dead Guy, Junior, the heroes name a lemur Julius Junior, or JayJay for short.
• Misery: Annie's pig is named after her favorite character.
• In Dawn Cook's Princess at Sea, Tess names her gelding "Jy" after her Friendly Rival Captain Jeck (who, incidentally, also cannot have children...)
• Zimmerman from Ben Eltons ecothriller Stark names a camel that he captures and tames for the final attack on Stark after two fallen friends.
• The titular character of John Connolly's Charlie Parker series names his dog (acquired between books #3 and #4) Walter, which just happens to be the name of a former NYPD colleague and one of his few remaining friends. In a later book he claims this was deliberate during a conversation with the original Walter, although he doesn't elaborate on his reasons.

Live Action Television

• There's an episode of Father Ted where Dougal gets a rabbit, and initially wants to name it Ted, then suggests "Father Jack Hackett" as an appropriate name. So it is played with, but they end up calling it Sampras, which is a sort-of example, since Pete Sampras is obviously a human, but equally obviously not a character on Father Ted. Dougal gives his logic in this as "the obvious rabbits-tennis connection."
• In Fawlty Towers, Manuel's pet rat ("No rat, ees Siberian Hamster!!") is called Basil.
• In an episode of Seinfeld, Kramer gets a rooster which he names Little Jerry.
• In the first season of Heroes, Chandra names his pet lizard after his son, Mohinder.
• Tina Lord of One Life to Live named her dog David Vickers after the human character David Vickers. Then David Vickers had puppies.
• When Gavin's mother dies, someone gives him a pet hamster to console him. "I named the hamster Mom, and it died. Ironic, eh?"
• In Just Shoot Me, one of Jack's ex-wives names her dog after him because it humps anything that moves.
• On The George Lopez Show, Benny's ex husband names his dog after her. It's a female dog. This caused some confusion when Benny meets his current wife, who asks her dog if she wants to use the potty.
• On Boy Meets World, Shawn has a pig he calls Little Cory.
• On Arrested Development, Buster, in an attempt to grow away from his near-Oedipal relationship with his mother, adopts a turtle, who he named "Mother."
• On Lost, Daniel has a lab rat named Eloise. We later learn that this is his mother's name as well.
• One of the signs that Reg Barclay's attempt to maintain contact with USS Voyager is turning into one of his obsessions is that he has a cat named Neelix.
• Myka on Warehouse 13 names her ferret after her partner Pete because "they're both cute and annoying"
• One of Wilson's exes in House owned a dog with him that constantly peed on their rug; she blamed House for wrecking their relationship and subsequently named the dog Hector because "Hector Does Go Rug" was an anagram of "Doctor Greg House". House thought that connection was tenuous at best too.
• NCIS S2 Ep15, "Caught On Tape", Kate names the dog of the killer, Tony, even though it's a girl. This leads to a humorous scene where Tony is listening in on Kate and Abby talking about whether Tony likes them, how cute Tony is, and how maybe they could share Tony.
  • He probably brought this on himself by claiming in S2 Ep10, 'Chained', to be looking for his dog, a mangy shih-tzu named Kate.
  • S5 Ep13, "Dog Tags" has another Type 1, where Abby has to run tests on a military police dog, who she names Jethro.
• I Love Lucy: Little Ricky names his dog Fred.
• Hannah Montana: One episode revealed that Miley once had a pig named Luann. The later episode, "Torn Between Two Hannahs" features her obnoxious cousin, Luann, whom she had named it after.
• At one point, Neal from White Collar introduces Peter as 'Mr. Satchmo', in tribute to his yellow lab. Peter then destroys Neal's perfected cover in retaliation, something Neal understood.
• In the Doctor Who episode "The Girl Who Waited," Amy, trapped in the Two Streams resort for thirty-six years, gets a Companion Cube robot, that she has literally disarmed and painted a smiley-face on, for company and names it Rory. It's initially taken as a sign of how emotionally distant to Rory she now is, she doesn't address him by name. Later however when Old Amy talks is able to talk to Young Amy, Young Amy points out/reminds her why she named it Rory, instead of The Doctor or after her favorite cat. It's because Rory is the love of her life.
  • Also, in "Rise of the Cybermen", Rose travels to an alternate universe, where her father is alive and still married to Jackie. She discovers that in this reality, they didn't have a daughter, but instead have a dog named Rose. She is deeply upset, but the The Doctor just starts laughing.
• In the The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode "The Bow-Wow Affair", Illya is working alone on the case, but he names a borrowed fox Napoleon.
• In El Chavo del Ocho the kids adopt a puppy and promptly name it "Ramoncito" after Don Ramón the resident slacker. The kids doesn't mean ill, but of course the human namesake isn't very flattered.
• In the Law and Order SVU episode "Authority", criminal Merritt Rook names a sheep "Elliot" after Elliot Stabler, implying that Elliot is a sheep who blindly follows rules. He later rescinds that statement though, saying that Elliot "is a human being, not a sheep."
• In Kaboul Kitchen, General Amanullah named his two dogs "George" and "Bush". Ironically, he is supported by the American government.

Stand Up Comedy

• The ventriloquist Jeff Dunham:

Jeff Dunham: I named the dog "Bill" because I got him when Clinton was in office, and as a puppy, he was humping everything.

Video Games

• In Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, Elaine has named her dog Guybrush, for a series of unflattering reasons.
  • Mostly because this is a Shout-Out to Indiana Jones.
• In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, the name of a parrot is a clue to the real identity of a witness, as somebody important to the case lost a girlfriend. Manfred Von Karma retorts that his granddaughter has a dog named Phoenix and that it doesn't mean she named it after him.
• Ghost Trick: Sissel was named after Yomiel's dead fiancee, which provides a neat explanation for his Gender Blender Name.
• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time, in the post-game, has a cat named Sherlotta, after one of the main characters. Well, kind of.
• In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, a family on Outset Island names their pet pig after you.
• Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 has Jungo Torii name a cat he finds "Jungo" because it's easy to remember. It gets confusing very quickly.
  • A variant occurred earlier in Ocarina of Time (which may overlap with Dead Guy, Junior depending on how you look at it). Darunia ends up naming his son after "The Legendary Dodongo Buster", so he's known as "Hello, Insert Name Here of the Gorons."
  • Also occurs in Twilight Princess, where the cat owned by Beth's family shares Link's name. This makes no sense, until you remember the hilarious schoolgirl crush that Beth has for Link.
• In Tales of the Abyss, Emperor Peony named his rappigs with the name of people from his childhood (bar Luke). Hilariously, Saphir, which is Dist's real name, is the name of the stupid one.

Web Comics

• In the Walkyverse, Joyce has, unintentionally, named two dogs after boys she had crushes on, both times after being mindwiped of the boys' existence. In Roomies! Joyce has an unrequited crush on Danny. Still mindwiped and unable to remember her prior life, she and new BF Walky get a dog. Named? Daniel.
  • Additionally, her childhood dog was named Walkies. She'd met Walky onboard the alien craft that gave them superpowers, but they were both mindwiped of the encounter.

Web Original

• Three YouTubers, Melisa (GirlOnDuty), Kevin (zXNoRegretzzXz), and Jamie (Utorak007) did a Minecraft series called Let's Play Survival Island. Their friend Crowley (irishCROWLEYz) couldn't join them, so Mel tamed a wolf and named it after him.

Western Animation

• On Total Drama Island, Harold adopts a snail and names it Leshawna Jr., after his love interest. It's supposed to be a compliment, though Leshawna probably wouldn't take it that way herself.
• A possible example in Justice League: Crisis On Two Earths: The Jester (Joker's analogue) has a monkey named Harley - and we know his allies were killed off almost to a person. It's unknown if the monkey is named after Harley Quinn the person or if she is Harley Quinn's actual alternate-universe counterpart.
• In an episode of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, Flapjack adopts a rat and calls it "K'nuckles the second."

Real Life

• The Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (Carl von Linné) is claimed to have named Geranium Robertianum (a flower mostly known for its repulsive odour) after a childhood bully.
• Katy Perry named her cat Kitty Purry.
• John Barrowman, who played Captain Jack Harkness on Doctor Who and Torchwood, has a Jack Russell called Captain Jack.
• Frequently happens when a new species is discovered, such as when Gary Larson had a newly-found breed of parasitic louse named after him. It was meant as a compliment.
  • Sir David Attenborough has a species of echidna named after him.
  • And Charles Darwin has a moth and a prehistoric lemur named after him.
• The Other Wiki has a list of animals named after celebrities.
• In some Shi'ite Muslim majority countries, they will frequently kick and refer to dogs as "Umar" as a reference to the 2nd Sunni Caliph.
• One Argentinian journalist, Jorge Lanata, once had a little pig in his show. He named it "Varone" (but said he was also considering naming him "Orlando"), after "Orlando Barone". Because he knew that "once he grows up, he will became a big pig".

Examples of Type 2

Anime and Manga

• In Gunnm, main character Gally was named after a cat that Dr. Ido owned, which had died a short time before he found her. She's not happy to hear this. Of course, in the U.S. version, the cat's name is Alita instead. Either way, part of the reason she's not happy about it is that the cat was male.
• In Nana, one of the two Nanas was nicknamed "Hachi" to differentiate between them. This came from Hachiko, because she was known for being incredibly loyal.
  • And also means "Eight" in Japanese. "Nana", respectively, meaning "Seven".
• Amadeus, Sieglinde's Battle Butler dragon in Dragonaut: The Resonance is named after her late dog from when she was a kid.
• In The Daichis Earth Defence Family, younger child Dai learns that he was named for a dog his mother had as a child. To hammer it further, the kanji for Dai's name can be made into the kanji for "dog" with just one more stroke.
• Yoite from Nabari no Ou has the same name as a cat Yukimi used to have. Strangely, this is later inverted into Type 1 when Yukimi gets another cat after Yoite dies and, unconsciously influenced by the traces of his memories of Yoite(the person, not the first cat), names it Yoite. And in the end it's subverted when everyone regains their memories of Yoite and Yukimi renames the cat "Yoi".
• In the Black Butler manga, Sebastian was named after Ciel's dog. Though he didn't show it, he was quite displeased at this (he doesn't like dogs).

Film

• Indiana Jones so disliked being named for his father that he used the nickname Indiana for most of his adult life. As revealed in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, this was the name of the family dog.

Sallah: Please, what does it mean, this "Junior" business?
Henry: That's his name. Henry Jones Junior.
Indy: I like Indiana.
Henry: We named the dog Indiana.
Sallah: The dog? You are named after the dog?!? Hahaha!
Indy: I've got some very fond memories of that dog.

• • The decision to ditch his father's (who that last line implies he doesn't have many "fond memories" of) name in favour of the name of his beloved childhood pet tells the audience just what kind of childhood he had.
  • Indiana was actually the name of George Lucas' dog. And following the line, the other two protagonists of Temple of Doom were named after dogs, Willie (Steven Spielberg's) and Short Round (screenwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz)
    • Played with in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with Mutt Williams, who is named not after a dog but after a synonym for "dog."
  • In the Graphic Adventure, Marcus says his family had a cat named Marcus before he was born, and Elsa, if she survived the Grail Temple sequence, says she thinks her father had a secretary named Elsa.
  • Irregular Webcomic parodies this with Montana Jones, who was also named after a dog, but it turns out his real name is North Dakota Jones, Jr.
• Subverted in the Hungarian animated film Treasure of Swamp Castle: the main female protagonist, Szaffi gets her name after her baby sneeze, but incidentally it's the same as her surrogate mother's cat's name.

Literature

• Unintentional example: In The Wheel of Time, main character Perrin meets a girl who has run away from her privileged lifestyle to become an adventurer but is having trouble deciding on a name. At first she introduces herself as "Mandarb," an Old Tongue word meaning "blade," and Perrin laughingly points out that one of the horses in his group has the same name.
  • She then decides that Faile, meaning Falcon, would also be a cool name. Which becomes a Meaningful Name due to an earlier prophecy, and any appearance in subsequent prophecies.
• There's a YA book called My Louisiana Sky where the main character's mentally handicapped mother named her Tiger, after a cat she had when she was a little girl and loved so much she accidentally squeezed it to death.
• Towser, an old jester in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn got his name from one of his king's dogs when he pledged to be as loyal as a hound.
• The 19th-century novel At The Back of the North Wind has a cabman's son named Diamond, named for his father's favorite horse, who is important character himself in the book, and is referred to by the narrator as Old Diamond.
• One of the many alter-egos Arya Stark comes up with over the course of A Song of Ice and Fire is "Nymeria", the name of the pet direwolf she was once forced to release into the wild. This in turn is a case of Type 1, as she named the wolf after a legendary warrior queen.

Live Action Television

• In Frasier, Niles and Frasier discover their late mother's journal with numerous references (apparently) to them and their problems. After spending the episode angsting over the implications, they discover that they've been reading her lab journal from before their birth. "Niles" and "Frasier" were her experimental rats. At first they're relieved, but then it dawns on them;

Niles: Our mother named us after rodents!

• Monk has Adrian Monk's older brother, Ambrose, whose father named him after a tortoise.

Tabletop Games

• An issue of Dragon Magazine had an article on religious attitudes for non-cleric characters, and suggested that chaotic characters may show their devotion through naming weapons, pets, or children after their god. Depending on the character, it may be difficult to discern between a chaotic character using Type 2, and an impious character using Type 1.

Theater

• In the play Christmas On Mars by Harry Kondoleon, Audrey discovers her mother named her after a cat she once had.

Web Comics

• In Batman and Sons, Catwoman named her son, Terry, after her first cat.

Batman: She named my son after a cat, Alfred.

• In Impure Blood, Mac starts to speculate about this as soon as she learns his real name is Roan, because she knew of a horse that was called a roan.

Western Animation

• Sterling Archer gets his codename "Duchess" from his mother's beloved dog.

Real Life

• There is an asteroid named after Mr. Spock... the namer's cat.
• Kemal Ataturk had an entire menagerie called Abdul.
  • No he didn't!
• Clive Staples Lewis didn't like his name (understandably). At the age of four, he began insisting that everyone call him Jacksie, after the family's recently-deceased dog; 'Jacksie' mutated over the years into 'Jack', the nickname his relatives finally stuck with.
• Marion Michael Morrison had a dog named Duke as a boy, and went everywhere with it. As a result, one of his neighbors started calling him "Little Duke"; when he grew up and became famous as John Wayne, the nickname of "Duke" stuck with him.
• Yet another real life example: Bindi Sue Irwin. Her first name comes from a crocodile (given her father, that should surprise no one), and her middle name comes from the family dog's name (this is a slight subversion, as the dog's name apparently is Sui).
• Delta Burke's name came from the family cat. The name was decided upon shortly after her birth when a relative exclaimed, "She looks like Delta the cat!"

1. ↑ The text is actually somewhat unclear on this: she could be talking about an imaginary stableboy when she mentions "Mordechai," though the pony is more likely, and would certainly be funnier.