Wednesday 11 July 2007

Name the Puppy

As a temporary measure, our 7 week old puppy is called 'Insanity' but this cannot continue! Help us choose another name.




Labrador Retrievers were recognized in England as a Kennel Club breed in 1903 and first registered by the AKC in the United States of America in 1917. Labradors were originally called a St. John's Dog or lesser Newfoundland dog. The breed was in Newfoundland in the 1700s and imported to England beginning the early 1800s. The Labrador's exact origin unknown but some speculate the Greater Newfoundland dog or the French St. Hubert's dog is part of the cross that made the St. John's dog.

This puppy is my 3rd Labrador. A much loved 'Elizabeth' & much maligned 'Alex' preceed her.

My advice to someone wanting a dog of this breed is this:

Hide your valuables!

Most Common Female Names Found in Newfoundland Cemeteries

These names were extracted from the StonePics database which contains the transcripts of names and dates from approximately 99% of the headstones of Newfoundland cemeteries. The numbers to the left of the names are in order of most common & show a count of how many times they appeared in Version 3.0 of the database. The database contains 319,573 given names (including repeats) and 264,284 surnames (including repeats). The change of a given name being "Mary" is 17446/319473 = 5.5%.

My great grandmother's family on my father's grandmother's side was from Newfoundland. Her name was Mary Jane Power. This would have been quite a common name! I've highlighted the ones in use by my family of today or recent yesteryear.

If you are trying to determine a given name on an old headstone in a Newfoundland cemetery, there is more than a 54% chance that it will be one of the following:


Given Names


  1. 17446 - Mary
  2. 7655 - Elizabeth
  3. 4692 - Margaret
  4. 4026 - Sarah
  5. 3389 - Catherine (we have a Kathryn)
  6. 3363 - Annie (we have Anastasia aka Annie - a cat)
  7. 2523 - Ellen
  8. 2046 - Bridget
  9. 1957 - Jane
  10. 1891 - Alice
  11. 1718 - Ann
  12. 1653 - Emma
  13. 1382 - Jessie
  14. 1366 - Martha
  15. 1309 - Eliza
  16. 1179 - Florence
  17. 1157 - Frances
  18. 1140 - Agnes
  19. 1116 - Emily
  20. 1104 - Julia
  21. 1073 - Ethel
  22. 1037 - Lucy

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Felicity,

I find it very funny that the family pet is named via cyberspace! Lucy was not a pick for me as our lab is called Lucy... we got in first, but from my research Lucy is one of the most common names for a dog in Australia! Just to prove a point, when we moved into our street a couple of years ago we added the third Lucy into a street with seven houses.

Have fun with your puppy and as a previous owner of labs you will know that they are puppies for such a long time. Our Lucy is now five, but hey she thinks months not years!

Zeena