Originally published at: Medieval pet names included Sturdy, Nosewise, Tibert, and Meone | Boing Boing
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Nameles
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Still, Meone and Breone are very cute cat names.
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Bookmarking this for when the resident munchkin finally wins the battle to get a pet around these parts.
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There are noted, in the Irish Annals, several men in the 16th century bearing the name Fear Gan Ainm, which literally means “Man Without a Name” or “Anonymous Man”. Like, that was their name.
One of them gloried in the name Fear Gan Ainm mac Fir Dorcha: “Man-without-a-name, son of Dark Man”.
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Clearly a character from a Sérgio Leone’s movie.
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If you pronounce Nameles like tameles, he could be in there too!
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Witches’ familiars had their own imaginative names.
(I know, not medieval. Sue me.)
In the unlikely event that I ever acquire a cat, I shall certainly name it Griezzell Greedigutt.
(In the movie Bell, Book and Candle, Kim Novak’s cat is named Pyewacket.)
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I don’t know what creature Vinegar Tom is, but I bet his pee smells bad.
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Vinegar Tom, “who was like a long-legg’d greyhound, with a head like an Oxe”
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Wow. Then that illustration is actually pretty good.
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Seventeenth century court reporters knew their stuff.
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Nice names, bad portraits.
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There is also the classic Nemo, which means “no one”.
Also, hooray for Pyewacket, a gloriously strange name for a cat, or demon!
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I assume that records of pet names from this period only recorded the gentry. I wonder whether and what the masses called dogs and cats
It was new to me too. I came across it when I was looking for a new-Irish version of “Mise agus Pangur Bán”. The original “Misse occus Pangur Bán” is really hard to read.
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