Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Kendall's name

I'm 3000 miles away again on another business trip, so I thought it would be a good time to post on the origins of Kendall's name.

Kendall, like the rest of the pets in our home, was named after a physicist, Henry W. Kendall. We looked at many, many physicists' names and decided that Kendall sounded like a girl's name, although I know it's often used as a boy's name, and it rolled off the tongue nicely. Come Kendall...Sit Kendall... While she may not aspire to the high achievements of Henry W. Kendall, we have confidence that she's going to turn into a pretty good dog.

Our cats are also named after physicists. Our first cat, Dinger, named after Schroedinger's cat succumbed to chronic renal failure in October 2006. Our other two cats, Oppenheimer, better known as Heimey, and Enrico Fermi, better known as Rico, are learning to tolerate the presence of Kendall. Rico came to live with us by way of Craigslist, and I have reason to believe he lived with dogs in his former life. He seeks out Kendall's company and sometimes plays with her. Heimey, who has never been around dogs before in his life, is curious but still really cautious.

No comments: