Trying to think of the earliest example of a wild animal receiving a personal name. The one I can think of (outside fables) is Old Tom, an orca who lived of Twofold Bay in southern New South Wales Australia from the 1860s to the 1890s. Apparently he was the leader of a group of orcas who would assist whalers by herding baleen whales in the bay. After the whalers had stripped the carcasses Old Tom and his group would feast on the leftovers. I also think that the fictional Moby Dick might also have been been based on a true story of a large sperm whale.
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Yes, I have also found that cockroaches float.
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There’s a Squirrel in our yard who I named Spot because he has a small white spot (we only know its there because he likes our bird feeder with a camera)
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This is the second year I’ve had this partially leucistic female House Finch come to my feeder. She has a white splotch above one eye and will fight the males for seeds.
I haven’t named her yet, because if I do name her I want it to be a very special name, but I do enjoy when she visits! (If anyone has any ideas, let me know, “the female leucistic house finch”) is a pretty long name)
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One time a squirrel broke into our ramen when we were camping! He was a baby red squirrel, and we named him Jimmy.
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I named some random house fly that kept coming near me “Dumb idiot” and I named a random male cricket “Tyson”
I also named female House Sparrows Kayla and male House Sparrow Kevin before.
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theres a squirrel named Maple, two rabbits- Jeep and Steven: Eater of Weeds, a one-eyed perch called Captain Fisheye, a snapping turtle named Troll, and a house finch named Alexander
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Sumer before last, we had a baby cottontail living in our yard, who was absolutely obsessed with the culinary properties of Taraxacum. And I mean obsessed, as in this bunny would ignore anything else in the yard if there was a single unharvested rosette anywhere on the property.
Needless to say, the little puffball ended up being named Dandelion. It was a joy to watch this bunny turn into an actual Eastern Cottontail. (Weirdly, I don’t have an observation for Dandelion uploaded; I’ll have to check the photos on D’s phone.) This past spring, we saw that the dandelions weren’t putting up flowers, and then had a confirmed Dandelion sighting just a few days later.
I hope that we get to see Dandelion again this year; I know that the odds are against an urban bunny having such a long lifespan, but I can hope. Or, maybe one of their offspring has inherited their palate, and now the new bunny gets to be Dandelion. Either way, the continuity is pleasing.
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Lucy?
re the topic in general - one name resulted from a parenting mistake I became aware of early in my motherhood. One of the early books my son had was a picture book of animals, one per page. There was a page that showed a spider, and with the thought that I was making it fun, whenever we’d turn to that page I would excitedly say “OOO!”, and then say it was a spider. Then came the day that I learned I had taught my son not only that spiders were called “OOO’s”, but that they were spooky. oops We regularly had Phidippus audax appear in the house we lived in then, and in an effort to fix my mistake, in addition to clarifying that they’re called “spiders”, we called the in-house Phidippus audax ones “Fred”, to try to take away the spooky concept. (I don’t think it really worked…at 23 he seems to have a respectful discomfort around spiders, rather than an easy co-existence. My arachnophobia was too powerful, and my discovery of iNat (which has greatly reduced that fear) too late!) 
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On behalf of The Lucys, known worldwide for occasional splotchiness and seemingly limitless tenacity, I approve this suggestion.
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Your approval is greatly appreciated - I just want to be clear I was playing with the term “leucistic”, not at all meaning to imply I felt that you or any other Lucy is splotchy! 
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Nono, I understood the wordplay, don’t worry. And I am occasionally very splotchy and daily a bit always, as I have many, many sun freckles. (True: when I was young, I thought they made me lovely because they looked like chocolate chips.)
And honestly, I love when animals are named Lucy! An honor!
Back to topic:
This behemoth has now been named Fredward, as in, “Please be aware before you let the dogs into the garden that Fredward is sunning himself on the edge of the pool.”
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Lucy’s a great name! Leucisitic axolotls in the pet trade are also sometimes called ‘Lucys’. Thank you for the name idea, I think I’ll start calling her that!
I would be very honored if an animal was named Gianna, especially if that animal was a quail!
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Yes, once I named a random bug Joshua: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/203456007 Found its ‘home’ and I’ve regularly ‘visited’ it for a week until it disappeared. :)
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And the list is literally endless: cats, birds, hedgehogs, fish, anything!
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Sun freckles are lovely!!
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Because many here have commented about how the act of naming a specific organism almost inevitably creates a new, personalized level of respectful connection with that other lifeform, it has got me thinking more broadly about humanity’s ancient and cultural practices and stories that demonstrate this.
My maternal grandfather (died just before I was born) spent most of his youth in the Carpathian mountain meadows of Ukraine working as a shepherd and eventually immigrating to Ontario, Canada and starting a small farm and family,
One of the things my 90-year-old mom recalls about her dad is that when it came time on the farm to butcher any animals, my grandfather would always make sure to be far away from the action. (Grandma, OTOH, was the one in charge of all that)
My wife grew up on a small dairy farm where it was very common to include a few beef cattle along with the dairy herd to harvest for family consumption. But it was pretty similar. Her dad was an amazingly gentle soul, and the butchering stuff was left to other pros offsite. He was also known never to name any of his livestock as a way to help manage his mental transition from caring for animals to… well, consuming them. And this was a pretty common practice in the farming community they lived in.
So there’s a genuine and willful separation of naming and caring for animals among livestock farmers that seems to go back forever.
And with modern, industrialization and marketing management practices, the vast majority of the animal product consumers now are totally insulated from connecting to the experiences of going from creature to consumable. It’s truly baked into the system to minimize thinking in this direction.
But this isn’t just about livestock practices. Or even harvesting other organisms. Our historical relationship with the wild has always been the genesis of how we relate to the way we have socially and culturally evolved.
So much so that in our modern lifestyle it has largely vanished or been nudged to mental and emotional spaces that can be controlled to maximize market and political control by those with the profit incentive resources to do so.
An ancient, and quite universal example of this might be illustrated within beekeeping culture is the practice of ‘Telling the bees’. It’s the ingrained belief that keeping the hives quietly informed about great personal events in the keeper’s lives is a way to directly ensure the colony’s health and vigour.
In many apiary cultures it’s considered still vital to inform the news of any deaths of a keeper. But in others, births, even marriages were part of the mix.
There’s something strangely powerful about this custom. Maybe it’s just the whole ‘mystery-field’ around the ancient practice of beekeeping. Or that as commercially vital as it is, there is no way to industrialize beefarming at the same massive scale we’ve achieved with other species. The inherent connection to wild spaces and instincts seems an inseparable part if their commercial succcess.
Here’s an interesting piece about bee telling if anyone’s interested in learning more:
https://thebfarm.com/blogs/news/the-interesting-tradition-of-telling-the-bees
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There are crows that hang out on a telephone pole/wire many mornings when I leave for work. I haven’t named them, but I usually greet them and wish them a good day. One, because crows in folklore and myth are tricksters. Two, because science says they are smart. Three, they are there. You might also find me talking to something in the wild–for example, greeting an old oak. Don’t usually name anything though.
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