A Dream of Naming

"Good ... bad ... I'm the one with the gun."

"First you want to kill me, then you want to kiss me ... blow."

"Hail to the king baby'

If you haven't seen Army of Darkness I highly recommend it for a good laugh. It's really not that well made, there's some pretty large plot holes, and it's not everyone's cup of tea but it's become a cult favorite. It's part of the Evil Dead series of movies written and directed by the Raimi boys - they also made the Spiderman trilogy and Sam Raimi has executive produced things like Xena and Hercules for those paying attention. Obviously this is where I got Raimi's name.

I was trying to decide what to call him and couldn't see myself calling a dog Ash. I'm accustomed to two syllable names for dogs and I spent some time pondering this dilemma while Raimi was still a baby puppy. Raimi just seemed to click.

Of course, now I do call him a one syllable name, Boy, it sometimes helps to have a back up two-parter to get his attention when he's not listening. It's a good thing I axed Ash since the next dog I have will likely be a boy out of Halo's next litter, I want to name it Blood Diamond, and since the main character in that movie is Archer (who is from *Rhodesia*, again for those paying attention) that will be his name. I would have ended up with Halo, Leeloo, Ash, and Archer ... bit confusing for the bunch. As it is if Leeloo gets told off Halo looks at me sometimes with disgust like "What did *I* do?"

It's important to get the right name for a dog ... it will reflect who they are. Raimi is no 'Army of Darkness," quite the opposite really, but he is a formidable presence when he needs to be. Somtimes it's best to get the dog first and then pick a name, or wait until you know what their registered name will be and then pick a call name based on that.

My pile of couch potatoes seem to suit their names quite well ... although I think I could easily change them to Grumpy, Sleepy and Dopey and they'd hardly notice.