Pet names are part of your family’s private language

For most of human history, animals served a mostly functional purpose—something their names reflected. Dogs had names related to guarding, hunting, or shepherding, says Leibring, who has investigated the history of pet names. When cats received a name at all, it might have been something onomatopoeic like “Meow.”

However, as the role of companion animals evolved, so did our approach to addressing them. The increasing urbanization of the mid-19th century drove dogs indoors, paving the way for the development of smaller breeds. Nowadays, pets are more part of the family than ever. Correspondingly, over the last 30 years, their names have become increasingly human.

For Gordon, bizarre pet naming is likely an offshoot of the broader phenomenon of familect: private jargon within families that sounds like gobbledygook to outsiders. “Oftentimes it emerges naturally,” she says. “Where a child mispronounces a word and the parents think it’s funny, and then for the rest of their lives, they pronounce ketchup as keppage, right?”

Language is a powerful tool for signaling in-group status, and pets can become a significant constituent of family lore and identity. Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, has studied how people “ventriloquize” pets—giving them voices in conversations with other humans.