American Names

Bovine Baby Names

Holstein_heifer.jpg

Inspired by this humorous conversation I had with fellow name-blogger Mama’s List of Names…cow-inspired baby names! 

Characters and Namesakes:

Clarabelle – Disney’s Clarabelle Cow first appeared in Steamboat Willie (1928). Apparently she’s only a major character in Italy, where she’s known by Clarabella. In 2015, 30 baby girls were named Clarabelle, and 8 were named Clarabella.

Otis – the protagonist in the 2006 moovie Barnyard and its subsequent television show Back at the Barnyard. Strangely, Otis was a male cow with udders. This name returned to the top 1000 in 2015 after an approximately 20-year absence. U.S. Rank: #845; England and Wales Rank: #258 and rising.

Bessie / Bessy – I’ve never been sure why I’ve always associated the name Bessie with cows. Bessy is a character in Barnyard…but Bessie is apparently a Marvel creation known as Hellcow, a vampire cow! I seriously want someone to make a (bad) Hellcow movie, though this article disagrees with me. Bessie was also a 90s Beanie Baby. 11 baby girls were named Bessie in 2015, and 9 were called Bessy

Cattle Breeds: (Source)

Jersey – Jersey cattle. There was a joke in Barnyard involving cows with New Jersey accents. 145 girls, 9 boys in 2015.

Angus – Scottish name, 88 boys.

Galloway – 5 boys. “Belted Galloway” breed.

Devon – 508 boys and 77 girls.

Dexter – 753 boys.

Lulu – 59 girls. “Dwarf Lulu” breed

Hays – 16 boys. “Hays Converter”

Javari – 48 boys.

Kerry – 62 boys, 26 girls.

Lincoln – U.S. rank #66/England and Wales #129. “Lincoln Red”

Randall – 193 boys.

Gertrudis – Hasn’t recently appeared in SSA birth data, though Gertrude is always an option! “Santa Gertrudis”

Albion – 8 boys. “Blue Albion”

Jamaica – 12 girls. “Jamaica Hope”

Murray – 44 boys. “Murray Grey”

Siri – 25 girls. 

Reina – U.S. rank: #951. 

Miscellaneous:

Moo – This was the conversational spark. 8 boys and 7 girls were named Moo in 2015. I’m not sure, but I wonder if this might be a spelling of the already-Anglicized Chinese name Mu.

Taurus – 16 boys. Bos Taurus is the scientific name for the cow species, and “taurus” also refers to many subspecies. 

———

Thoughts? Let me know your favorites, and if there are any other bovine baby names I should add to this list! 

3 thoughts on “Bovine Baby Names

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s