What's in a dog name?

"I have no idea what's happening."

This photo is from our trip to SEMO. Bae enjoyed peeing in three new states.

Most of the time when I tell people my dog's name, if they know me or Mark at all they say something like, "Oh! That's perfect!" I still do get a few blank stares, though.

Baeowulf came to us as Goliath, the name the shelter gave him. He's huge, so its easy to see why he got that name. There's not really a good way to shorten "Goliath" to a one-syllable nickname for ease of use, and it was hard to say when trying to train him or talk to him. He didn't answer to it yet, and we didn't feel like it quite fit him - he's big, but he's not mean and doesn't have a habit of trying to crush children.

We ended up wanting to change the name right away, but it took us a week or two to come up with the perfect name.

The spelling is a different story. We added the "a" for a few reasons.

Spelled Baeowulf, it can be shorted to Bae, which makes sense for people if even they haven't heard of the epic. Without the a, the shorted name would be Be, and I'd have to answer 9000+ questions about why I named my dog be or hear it pronounced Bee, and bees freak me out a little.

Secondly, it's a wink to the show Once Upon a Time. We really like my favorite character Rumple's nickname for his son Baelfyre: Bae. We didn't want to name him Baelfyre, so the combination of the two names, Baeowulf, worked for us.

Now, Bae knows his name. And he know's he's in real trouble when he gets the o-wulf added... though he probably recognizes "wulf" from the amount of people that tell us he looks like a wolf (or werewolf, once).