The Names of Cats

Cats have more names than did the ancient pharoahs of Egypt. They had their given names, their throne names, their - oh, I don't know - their Heb Sed names, if they made it to that festival, their ka names, dynastic names...I could look this up. The books on Egypt are right nearby. But I won't. You'll just have to take it on faith.

Cats have their legal, given names. These are usually accompanied by a long parenthesis of explanation, such as:

Her name is Chessie... like the cat that was a logo for the C & O Railroad...with her mate, Peake...and their kits.

This is the name. The explanation is usually appended to it 99% of the time if one is speaking to someone who has not met the cat before, so it a name. Why? When I meet people, and I say my name is Montag, do I say I was born at night, but not Monday night, or some such tomfoolery? No. Montag it is. If the explanation is considered so important for a cat, it is obviously the true given name.
This has an abbreviated form, a form we more usually associate with a given name:

Her name is Chessie...

Then there are the names of endearment, such as "Snookie", and so on, and names of exploits, such as "Mouse Bane" or "Vole Terror". ( the last being a pun on "Voltaire", although what M. Voltaire has to do with cats, I do not know.)

In fact, we name cats the way a lot of the rest of the world handles names, where the given name often disappears under some prominent sobriquet. Abu Māzin is a common name for the President of the Palestinian Authority, even though that is not his given name. It is a kunya, and means he is the father of Māzin, who is probably his first child.
But this type of construction can go further, and someone could be called Abu Salām, meaning " the father of peace " and indicating a potential Nobel honoree. This happens all over. In these parts, we tend to restrict the practice to sports figures and criminals: Sultan of Swat, Tony Pro.
Personally, I think this is due to our old Puritan influence that somehow sees a multitude of names as being equivalent to "Legion", and forces us to adhere to one name, but that one well chosen, such as Prudence, or Makepeace. I think we have lost a lot of the fun. Names should flower so bountifully, that the mere mention of a national ID card should be the occassion of mirthful laughter.

Our true selves comes out when we play with the names of our pets.