Hello and welcome to Name Noodle! I’m Elise, the author, photographer, & sometimes doodler behind all the posts on this blog.
Here’s a picture of me with my cute lil’ cat, Bojrn:
Why Name Noodle? Why bother with a whole blog dedicated to basically just naming things?
To put it simply, naming things – people, places, plants, pets, other animals – stuffed or real – all of this is so much fun for me I figured I might as well start up a blog dedicated to names because of how enjoyable I find the process.
It might sound weird, but I’ve had an obsession with names as for as long as I can remember.
When I was a kid, I often took my mom’s baby name book, stashed away in her left nightstand, leafed through the pages, obsessing over their meanings and the sounds of the names for hours on end.
While I can’t remember what I was initially trying to name (most likely, nothing in particular), I do remember eventually trying to come up with fictional characters to write about.
I know for a fact I’d take that little book and spend more time browsing through it for names than I spent on actually writing out any fictional pieces (novels, short stories, things like that) I happened to try my hand at.
Eventually, I’d used the book so many times it ended up in my room, where I used it to name dolls or other toys, and of course – what girl wouldn’t – future pets and children that I was nowhere near close to having yet.
Then when I moved out, got married, and my husband Thomas and I started adopting pets of our own, naming took on a whole new level of fun.
Our first pet, a ball python, I named “Havana,” after the capital city of Cuba. Not the song, as that hadn’t come out yet, good song, though. I thought “Havana” was a gorgeous name for a gorgeous pet – a female snake we kept for years.
Then our first cat found us – a stray in our backyard – and I named him “Avery.”
I thought this was a stunning, elven sounding unisex-like name for our furry friend, who we initially thought was a girl, though I definitely named him after knowing his gender.
Truthfully, I named him Avery in part after the Grey’s Anatomy character, Jackson Avery. We were binge-watching the drama when Avery came into our lives and I thought the man who plays Jackson, Jesse Williams, had piercing green eyes that our cat’s eyes reminded me of. So he had his name.
The next cat that came into our life, Beau, was a complete sweetheart that visited our window regularly, and again, I thought he might be a girl because of how obsessed he was with our cat Avery.
He turned out to be a boy, but I still thought “Beau” suited his personality and appearance perfectly. My brother ended up adopting Beau and I kept right along naming a lot of the stray and feral cats that came into our lives.
When we moved to Portugal, there were a lot of stray and feral cats who frequented the neighbourhood. Some interacted with us a lot more than others.
There were a set of four Persian cats that loitered around our property so often, they’d staked it as their own territory, and these my husband Thomas had the brilliant idea of naming after The Three Musketeers – Aramis, Athos, and Porthos – and Dartanian as well.
Porthos passed away and we started to clue in to the fact that the fourth was most likely a child of one of the Three Musketeers.
So we adopted him, taking him into our house to be a brother to Avery, who we’d brought with us from Canada (we went from Canada to the UK with Avery, then when we moved again, to Cascais Portugal, he came with us as well).
I didn’t like the name Dartanian for that particular cat, it was too refined a name for our little guy. We were using “Bear” as a nickname (I called him “the Bear Grylls cat” because he looked so wild), but it wasn’t flowery enough, so right before taking him in I changed his name to “Bjorn” – which means “bear” – and that was that.
Aramis had kittens in our backyard, and only one of them survived – a feisty little girl I named “Cleo” after “Cleopatra” because of her will to survive and her powerful personality.
We also met a spunky, quick and cute little fella while out and about in our neighbourhood. He tried to play with us, hopping around like a rabbit, so I gave him the name “Stomper.”
Too much thought going into these names? Maybe, but I sure do love landing on the right one, that suits a personality, temperament, and look of an animal to a “t.”
There’s nothing much more enjoyable to me than landing on that perfect name.
This blog’s origin? When I created a couple posts on my plant/gardening blog, Potting Plans that had to do with naming cacti and naming succulents, quirky cute things like “Prickles” and “Fern.”
I realized I could do this for days, so I opened up this blog and have been naming random things ever since.
More, More, More!
My husband Thomas and I run a slew of sites beside this one! Each time we find we have a lot to say about a topic, we start up a new blog. In case you’re interested in taking a peek at our sites, you can browse through a summary of them here:
Blogs by Thomas & Elise
- Elise & Thomas: Our personal blog where we talk about our lives.
- Feed Your Fever: A fashion & style blog; concentrating on accessories and slow fashion.
- Munchalot: Our food blog, which is more or less a place to store our favourite recipes.
- Hurry, Let’s Go: Our travel blog, where we share two sets of photos – one from each of our perspectives – of places we’ve been. Some travel tips as well.
- More Than Just Surviving: Our survival, preparedness, and gear blog. Check it out if you’re into any of those things!
Blogs by Elise
- KittyClysm: A cat blog more for pet owners than anyone else. Plenty of kitty training tips, pet care advice – that kind of thing.
- Enchant Photography: A website with a blog showcasing my photography.
- Unpack Portugal: A blog about my experience living as an Expat in Cascais, Portugal.
- Name Noodle: A site that helps people name things – from new pets, to parties, to game characters, & so much more!
- Pun Lovin’: A site that rounds up puns by topic – like puns about ducks or clocks, or other miscellaneous things.
- My Pet Python: A now dead (no longer updated) blog that contains pet care advice for those with ball pythons.
Blogs by Thomas
- Scribble Jot: A stationery site with articles and reviews on fountain pens, papeterie, inks, and more.
Like to learn a little more about either of us? Besides reading through the entries on this blog, you can also visit our personal websites. Mine can be found here, while Thomas’ website can be found here.