What's in a name

D Vautier
11/2000

I have been involved in a more personal struggle for several years to find a suitable name for our little basset hound Sparky, which is what the kids named her.  Cyn and Fiona have developed all sorts of additional handles such as lovebug, honeybunch, babycakes, sweetie pie, and sugarfoot, none of which really fits too well because she is certainly none of the above.  But I too have devised several of my own dog names that I feel are much more appropriate, like dragbutt, scratchbelly, scratcher, swishswish, tripper, the nose, or simply basset when  can't think of anything else.  All of these names are more accurately suggestive of her many fine qualities.

But late one night I came upon the absolutely perfect dog name for our basset-----Maggot.  What a perfect name.  Consider the following similarities.

1)  They both have soft bodies that taper toward the front.
2)  Looks like a worm
3)  Wiggles and flips around a lot
4)  Usually white but may be colored
5)  Live buried in their food
6)  Scavengers
7)  They both sort of slither around the floor.
8)  You want to just step on them
9)  They are sooooo ugly

Cyn said that there is this really high-class restaurant in Paris called The Two Maggots so maggots can't be that bad.  Nor can the name.