Naming your new son Toby when your recently deceased cat was called Toby

A woman on Reddit asked for advice about naming her son who is yet to be born 'Toby' when her recently deceased elderly cat was named Toby. She loves the name but doesn't want to upset members of the family as they might dislike the association between her cat's name and the proposed name of her son. She is in a quandary over it.

Toby a good name for a cat. Image: MikeB

One responder to her request for advice found the solution I believe. Neit_1146 suggested that she name her son the long version of Toby which is Tobias.

The Baby Centre website says this about the name Toby:

A shortened form of Tobias, from Tobiyah, meaning "God is good" from the Greek towb, meaning "good" and yahweh, the Hebrew name of "God". Pronounced: toh bee. Actor Tobey Maguire is famed for his title role in the "Spiderman" films.

She might adopt the longer version of the shortened version! This would be Tobey as in the actor who played Spiderman.

That should scotch any potential objections from other family members, I hope.

RELATED: Infographic on medieval cat names.

Here are some strange Medieval domestic cat names if you are interested. Completely different. I wonder what we can infer from the difference?

What is the native American word for 'panther'?

Realistically, you can't answer the question in the title. I will tell you why. There are hundreds of different Native American tribes and languages. The native-languages.org website lists the most popular Native American languages of which there are 30. 

These are the most popular but, as mentioned, there are far more. It is simply impractical and I would suggest impossible to find out how these Native Americans used or still do refer to the mountain lion in their own language.

Image: MikeB

I'm going to presume that the word "panther" in this context is a reference to the mountain lion which is better described as the "puma". This is the most scientific term.

The puma has the most names in any case, not including Native American languages, of all the wild cat species. This is a very complicated picture.

Let's take one of the native languages of the Americas: Cree. I have selected them at random. It is spoken by more than 70,000 people across southern Canada and into Montana. It is an Algonquian language apparently. And there are five major Cree dialects. 

The Cree are Canada's largest native group with 200,000 registered members. There are dozens of self-government nations.

The most popular or commonly spoken native language is Quechua. There are approximately 8 million speakers and they live in the Andean region of South America. It is the language of the Inca empire of Peru.

Interestingly, the official name of the mountain lion, as mentioned, the puma, is a word which comes from the Quechua language.

The name puma first appeared in 1609 when Garcilasso de la Vega, the son of a Spanish conquistador and an Incan Princess wrote, "Lions are met with, though they are not so large not so fierce as those of Africa. The Indians call them Puma." 

The AI computer ChatGPT responds to the question in the title as follows:

"The native American word for panther varies among different indigenous cultures. Some common words for panther include "puma" or "cougar" in the Americas, and "mountain lion" in some western tribes. In some Eastern tribes, it's referred to as "catamount." The exact word used for panther can also depend on the specific language and dialect of the indigenous culture."

I thought that it is wasn't very helpful 😎.

Siamese Cat Names -- Female

Looking for female Siamese cat names? Well, to be honest, I would name your cat from his or her character not appearance and the name should come from the heart and your feelings about your cat.

That said early on I did build a page about Siamese cat names - male and female - that are based on names for Siamese people. The names lend themselves to adjustment and modification or shortening.

Siam, the place of origin of the Siamese cat, is now Thailand. An example of a name for a Thai girl is "Buppha" which means flower. You can see a list of names for people on this page which you can perhaps modify to suit a cat!