It took us more than a year after our greyhound, Edgar passed before we were ready to get a new dog. We held several auditions and finally decided on an affectionate, playful white greyhound with one cinnamon spot and a fetish for collecting shoes and gloves. But our work wasn’t done yet. He needed a name.
He had a name, of course—as a retired runner he had his racing name—“Major”. But he didn’t come when we called “Major”. He didn’t even look up. Clearly our new dog did not believe that Major was his name. We tried out “Winter” (too cold and sedate) and “Fen” (means “swamp”, plus everybody just ended up calling him “Fin”.)
Looking over the American Kennel Club’s list of popular dog names was no help. Max, Oscar, Bear, Bentley, Leo, Lucky, Oden, Arlo, Ragnar, Shadow, Buster and Jack. None of these seemed to fit. We worried that if we picked the wrong name, it could scar him for life. Would a dog named Tyson pick fights with other dogs? Would Bandit steal food off the kitchen counter? Would Ranger run away? After a week of referring to him as “good boy” we still couldn’t make a decision. I wonder if Adam had this much trouble.
In Genesis, there is a lot going on. God is busy making, you know, everything. After Adam is created, God starts making “every beast of the field and bird of the air” and brings them one by one for Adam to name, who at this stage has no name himself and is referred to only as “the man”. We can imagine that after a while, this process of thinking up the name for aardvark and whippoorwill, ladybug and trout was getting pretty tedious–not to mention, hazardous. “This creature shall be named ‘lion’. No, I don’t need to think over. He can go now. He looks hungry. Why is he looking at me like that?”
Right in the middle of creating the universe, God, the Master of Multitasking, decides that the man needs a girlfriend and while he sleeps, God makes Eve out of some of Adam’s spare parts. Genesis does not address this, but it would seem that once Adam meets Eve (whom he also names), he apparently loses all interest in naming more animals, leaving the task of giving Latin names to everything on Earth to those like Carl Linnaeus, the 18th Century Swedish biologist, known as the “father of taxonomy” and others with more time on their hands than Adam who was, you could say, the father of us all.
Just as we were at our wit’s end, having concluded that all dog names are silly and no people names are appropriate for a dog, we consulted our four-year-old niece, Audrey for her opinion on the matter. “Jomby,” she declared without hesitation. “Jomby?” “Yes, Jomby.” Let it be so.