We had three cats: Snuffy (because he was grey-brown, the colour of snuff, the powdered tobacco that some people sniff); Cleo (I don’t think there was a real reason for that); and Tybalt, named after the character in Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’, whose nickname was ‘The Prince of Cats’.
Funny fact about Snuffy: it might sound like a feminine name, but that’s because, when he was a kitten, we thought he was a girl! By the time we found out he wasn’t, the name had stuck. And he was actually the most laddish of all our cats. Certainly the only one who ever successfully hunted a bird (his colouring was really good camouflage).
Why do I say that ‘Snuffy’ sounds like it might be a girl’s name? Studies of onomasiology (the science of names) show that names that end in an ‘ee’ sound are more often girl’s names than boy’s names, so, if you’re presented with a name that you don’t know the gender of, but it ends in that sound, you’re more likely to think it’s a girl’s name.
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Damien commented on :
We had three cats: Snuffy (because he was grey-brown, the colour of snuff, the powdered tobacco that some people sniff); Cleo (I don’t think there was a real reason for that); and Tybalt, named after the character in Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’, whose nickname was ‘The Prince of Cats’.
Funny fact about Snuffy: it might sound like a feminine name, but that’s because, when he was a kitten, we thought he was a girl! By the time we found out he wasn’t, the name had stuck. And he was actually the most laddish of all our cats. Certainly the only one who ever successfully hunted a bird (his colouring was really good camouflage).
Why do I say that ‘Snuffy’ sounds like it might be a girl’s name? Studies of onomasiology (the science of names) show that names that end in an ‘ee’ sound are more often girl’s names than boy’s names, so, if you’re presented with a name that you don’t know the gender of, but it ends in that sound, you’re more likely to think it’s a girl’s name.