The naming of pets...

[RallyC]

So as I'm sure you're all aware there's this new battle system coming out in the next expansion that will allow you to battle with your vanity pets. Now this is cool and is something I'm greatly looking forward to, however, I noticed no one really has mentioned the other part of blizzard's update on this: naming your vanity pets! Now this might not be a big deal to some but I found the the news as just AWESOME! For role players who enjoy having a trusty companion at their side I imagine it's great news as well. Though I usually don't role play that much I think I might make a slight exception when it comes to introducing my pet to others that may ask about it.

Anyhow what do you all think of this new change? Are there names you've been dying to give your pets and will as soon as you get the chance? I know I've been waiting forever to name my white kitten "Peace Bloom" and my Moonkin Hatchling (Horde side) "Marahute" on my Druid. As for my main Hunter Rallyc, I'm not too sure yet. I love my Giant Sewer rat but naming him Splinter sees WAY too obvious. I'm sure I'll come up with something though .

Anyhow feel free to share what your thoughts and ideas here, anything from "I like/don't like this idea" to "I'm going to name X this!" is all good. Also if you have any good suggestions for names, like maybe one for my giant rattie, feel free to post those as well . Thanks for your time.

[GormanGhaste]

I'll probably name my rat Canton, after the city districts of Vivec in the Morrowind rpg, as they had Tons of sewer rats!

Honestly, I feel a little overwhelmed at the idea of coming up with almost 200 names. As I already name my hunter pets, I don't feel as much of a need to customize my mini-pets.

[RallyC]

I sorta doubt you'll have to name all of them. I imagine that when unnamed they'll go by the old names they have here, sorta like if you tame a cat as a hunter its default name is "cat" till you change it. I do hope though that they give the option to change the name later in case you think of something better. It would suck to obtain a rare vanity pet then misspell its name and be unable to change it .

[Nursie]

My planned names:

Phoenix Hatchling - Moltres
Sea Pony - Horsea
Vampiric Batling - Zubat
Worg Pup - Mightyena
Strand Crawler - Krabby

hehe need i go on?

[Lysi]

I've been naming my small pets since the get go, lol. My first, the snowshoe rabbit, is named Fidget. Still a lot of my pets haven't yet acquired names, but I'm sure I'll eventually name them all when it goes live. For some pets, deciding on which name to use will be the problem. For example, 4 of my toons have named their Westfall chickens, but I'm sure you'll only get one name for each kind of pet. My favorite of those names for the Westfall chick is Admiral Cluckers, but now that cluckers are the name of a more cartoonish kind of chicken in game, I'm not sure what to do. XD

[Serraphina]

Right now my Darkmoon monkey is Doctor, Leaping Hatchling is Pond, and Murkimus the Gladiator is Centurian.

I'm a nerd.

[Ruzgofdi]

Right now my Darkmoon monkey is Doctor, Leaping Hatchling is Pond, and Murkimus the Gladiator is Centurian.

I'm a nerd.

Okay, I get The Doctor and I get Centurian. I'm not sure about Pond. Or rather, why Leaping Hatchling is Pond and not something else.

[Serraphina]

That would be because I totally typoed. I meant Lashtail Hatchling

[Ruzgofdi]

That would be because I totally typoed. I meant Lashtail Hatchling

Sorry. Still not getting the connection.

[Serraphina]

That would be because I totally typoed. I meant Lashtail Hatchling

Sorry. Still not getting the connection.

Just a cute little hyper red thing. Currently she's sort of a placeholder until something better comes along.

[RallyC]

Since more info has risen up about the naming of pets I figure I'll share my thoughts on it. In more recent news it seems that pets are now account bound so all characters have the same pets. This is cool as it makes collecting time much shorter for multiple characters (once you get it with one char you don't have to farm for hours to get it again for another toon), however, there are some things I'm curious about. In the topic Preview of Pet Journal & Account Wide Collections by Quintessence there's the line

- Atm, duplicate pets are combined into one that's available to all toons on your account. (Example: I have a Perky Pug on my druid and a Perky Pug on my shaman. I don't get two Perky Pugs. Instead they're combined and I only have access to one through the Pet Journal.)

So this raises the question: are all characters then sharing the same pets? To clarify, is my Hunter's white kitten going the share the name and LVL of my Druids white kitten? I wouldn't think it'd be this way as it takes away from the joys of having each character's pet be a little different and unique to the character that owns it. For example as I stated in the topic start I was considering naming the white kitten "Peacebloom." I guess I should have been more clear because what I meant was that's my Druid's name for that pet. My Hunter has a different personality so I was leaning to the name "Mouse" for her kitten. Yet if they are indeed sharing the same kitten I can't do this...

[Quintessence]

So this raises the question: are all characters then sharing the same pets?

If accessed through the Pet Journal, yes.

What seems to be complicating things is that there are currently two ways to track your collection: account wide collection (accessed through the Pet Journal) and a specific toon's collection (accessed through the spellbook companion tab). The spellbook companion tab is unique for each toon at the moment, while the Pet Journal lists ALL of your characters' pets combined.

To clarify, is my Hunter's white kitten going the share the name and LVL of my Druids white kitten?

The unique name given to your pet is shared across all toons through the Pet Journal. So if, for example, you name your Hunter's white kitten Fluffy, your Druid will also summon a white kitten named Fluffy, but only if you summon this pet through the Pet Journal. If your Druid summons the white kitten through the spellbook, it resets to the default "white kitten" name. It's a bit buggy at the moment, so I'm not sure if this is intended or not.

You can only rename your pets through the Pet Journal and this does not change the names of the pets in your spellbook, so this leads me to believe that different names for the same pets on different characters will be unlikely.

Without being able to test pet leveling yet, it's hard to say for this question. I'm not sure how leveling will work yet and if you can only level pets summoned from your Pet Journal.

Things aren't set in stone yet, so we'll have to wait and see what changes are made as the beta progresses.

I hope this clarifies things!

[GormanGhaste]

I will at least name the pets I do pet battles with. Some more that I've come up with:

cockroach: Tommy
firefly: Kaylee
crawdad: Ilsebill

[Kaiyou]

I've already named some of my companions . Most are from movies and such because i'm uncreative XD.

Celestial Dragon: Aurora
Phoenix Hatchling: Jean(from X-Men)
Hyacinth Macaw: Lil Blu(From Rio and my tamed Aotona is named Blu)
Panther Cub- Lil Trouble(named after my cat and kind of goes with my tamed Skarr named Trouble)
Darkmoon Cub- Lil Pepper(from Iron Man and goes with my tamed Pogeyan named Pepper)
Cenarion Hatchling- Buckbeak(from Harry Potter. I'm surprised it let me name it that )
Dark Whelpling- Toothless(from How to Train Your Dragon movie, not book)

That's only a few of my named companions =).

[GormanGhaste]

more--

oracle hatchling: Lovebug
sprite darter: Chance
Legs: Chanterelle

[Lysi]

So, everyone, how is the naming going? I'm not trying to name everything. I like to leave many unnamed, in case of sudden future inspiration. Mostly I've put in names I already had in mind years ago, and some other pets have been named when they popped out using the random pet macro. I'm getting a bit tired of all the rules. I couldn't name a pet "Snowball" because it contains mature language--it's a classic pet name, and the name of an item in the game, but entirely inappropriate, lol. I figured I wouldn't be able to use "Admiral" because it's a military title, and I know that's not allowed. But it didn't occur to me I wouldn't be able to use "Lady" either. Another classic pet name unusable! I'm sure I'll run into more of that, too. But I do enjoy being able to name small pets, it adds more personality to the game.

[Mairin]

I'm getting a bit tired of all the rules. I couldn't name a pet "Snowball" because it contains mature language--it's a classic pet name, and the name of an item in the game, but entirely inappropriate, lol. I figured I wouldn't be able to use "Admiral" because it's a military title, and I know that's not allowed. But it didn't occur to me I wouldn't be able to use "Lady" either. Another classic pet name unusable! I'm sure I'll run into more of that, too. But I do enjoy being able to name small pets, it adds more personality to the game.

It didn't seem to like going with Mr or Mister at the start either which again are not exactly uncommon pet names. Snowball is just really silly though...

[Marziba]

I couldn't name a pet "Snowball" because it contains mature language--it's a classic pet name, and the name of an item in the game, but entirely inappropriate, lol.)

I was going to name my phoenix hatchling 'Fawkes' but apparently 'Fawkes' contains mature language. I ran into this yet again when trying to name my Undercity roach 'Princess'. I find it highly unusual that they're putting such strict rules on companion/battle pet names when I see dozens of inappropriate player and hunter pet names every day. =/

Of the pets I have been able to name, I have:

Albino Snake- Nagini
Bombay Cat- Basement Cat
Bombay Cat duplicate- Binx
Core Hound- Fluffy
Crimson Whelpling- Annastrasza
Darkmoon Cub- Nala
Dark Whelpling- Noiria
Dark Phoenix- Amethyst
Emerald Whelpling- Belissandra
Giant Sewer Rat- Scabbers
Grey Tabby Cat- Happy Cat
Little Fawn- Bambi
Magic crawdad- Pinchy
Mr Grubs- Precious (as soon as I can get one of the wild-caught maggots, this will be their name)
Orange Tabby Cat- Gizmo (named after one of my RL cats)
Panther Cub- Guenwhyvar
Proto-drake Whelp- Norbert
Siamese Cat- Dixie (named after one of my RL cats)
Smolderweb Hatchling- Charlotte
Snowshoe Rabbit- Thumper
Stinker- Flower
Tiny Shale Spider- Jadefang
White Kitten- Ceiling Cat
White Tickbird Hatchling- Angel
Worg Pup- Padfoot

[Lysi]

Basement Cat and Ceiling Cat, lol. Anyhoo, the same name rules apply to characters and hunter pets. But people get around the rules by using ASCII characters with accent marks, weird spellings, phrases, and such. You can report character, pet and guild names you find offensive. If Blizzard deems the name against the rules, they will be dealt with (usually just a forced renaming, unless it was really bad, hate speak or something like that, and warrants punishment). Blizzard is trying to filter too much, though. People who want to be bad will *always* find a way around the filters, no matter how many things they disallow. You can't just ban everything. Oh well, I ended up calling Snowball "Snowflake" instead.

[Bellaryl]

I'm surprised that no one mentioned naming their Firefly "Serenity".

I named all my whelplings after gemstones, my dragonhawks after flowers, a few Firefly references, a few Dr Who references. Blizz wouldn't allow me to name my Feline Familiar "Mephistopheles", so I chose "Azreal". All my dino hatchlings were named after real carnivorous dinosaurs (except for the Pterrodax - his name is "Pterrible"). Just as "Mister" is not available, neither is "Mother". So "Mudder Clucker", my Ancona Chicken, proudly struts around. One of my parrots is named Buffet, the other is Margarita. Thank goodness I can change those names around at will in case I get a brainstorm and find something I like better.

I don't have as many pets as some, but I spent a good 2 hours coming up with names for my various pals. It gives guildies and players alike a chuckle, since I use GupPet and summon random pets all the time.

I found Pet Battles first, and have 3 pets I'm leveling up. So...that explains why I'm still level 85 and sitting in Orgrimmar.