A rose by any other name...

After several days of agonised soul-searching, Pam and I have reluctantly decided to give our dog Bud a new name.

As I mentioned before, we originally called him Bud because we already had a cat named Miller.

For the benefit of British readers, Bud and Miller are two of America's leading brands of beer, both limply bland potations that stimulate the neurotransmitters but not the taste buds.

I once got chatting to a regional sales manager for one of the big US breweries at a bar in Midland, Texas. "I've just come back from a two-week beer-tasting tour of Belgium and Germany," he slurred. "It just made me realise what crappy products I've been selling for the past fifteen years."

Anyway, the worker from the animal refuge found Miller the cat sitting alone in the desolate parking lot of a strip mall boarded up since Hurricane Katrina. Beside him, an empty can of Miller Lite blew listlessly back and forth in the wind. That's how he got his name, and Bud seemed the obvious choice when we acquired a canine companion for him.

Bud is only a year old, his puppyish enthusiasm still undimmed by any trace of world-weary cynicism. He's at a formative stage in his life, and things that happen to him now could crucially affect his fortunes later on. We believe that the decision to rename him is an investment in his long-term future.

It came after I stumbled on a year-old article in the Christian Science Monitor by someone called Jacqui Goddard. It's about the increasing popularity of consultants who, for a modest fee, will advise you on whether the name you choose for your progeny is likely to inspire respect and career success, or have people guffawing behind your back at your incredible lack of taste.

Of course, the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor is itself a living example of how an unfortunate name doesn't have to be a handicap.

It's a lively and authoritative international newspaper whose sole concession to matters spiritual is a daily article on religion - though Jacqui sometimes tells interviewees she's writing for the 'Boston Monitor' to avoid the impression that it's one of those deranged six-page religious rags, the kind that nameless people leave on the chairs in dentists' waiting rooms, hoping you'll undergo a Damascene conversion while having all your teeth pulled out.

Anyway, back to Bud. The article cites Professor Albert Meharabian of UCLA, who has researched people's perceptions of first names.

[Prof. Mehrabian] asked people to ponder lists of names and award each a score in five set categories: ethical/caring, popular/fun, successful, masculine/feminine, and overall attractiveness. The results helped him to produce a comprehensive profile of the kind of positive or negative impression each name conveys.

For example, Chad scored consistently high in all categories, while Bud ranked low – including a zero in the "successful" category. Chads are more likely to have a secure self-image, be regarded more positively by others, and be treated well at school and work than Buds.

In deference to public opinion, therefore, we've decided to call our canine friend Chad.

It wasn't our first choice. After all, Chad is the one of the world's poorest countries, a vast expanse of dusty nothingness sometimes referred to as the Dead Heart of Africa, still basking in the afterglow of being named the world's most corrupt country in 2005. It's also the name given to the little paper butterflies on Florida ballot papers that gave us eight years of George W. Bush.

But there you go: it was Shakespeare who said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but he also said that needs must where the devil drives.