Your Thoughts On Re-Naming

[Pie]

Hi everybody! I have a question for you all.

What are your thoughts on giving an adopted hamster a new name if you don't think the old name suits him or her?

For me, even if I know what a hamster's previous owner called him/her I always give them a new name because they're starting a whole new life with me and so I don't want the name to be a reminder of their past. All my hammies came from really bad homes and since their owners didn't care about them enough to treat them well, they don't deserve to give them a name anymore. Simple as that. That's just my opinion though, but I find that most rescue stations in our area do this too. I have contact with many others who save animals from bad situations and they always get new names too. If they had a really bad life before and can now finally be happy, I like to give them meaningful names like "Hope" or "Joy".

[Mona's Humans]

When we rescued our first, she was called Summer - we changed it to Mona so it would still sound similar to her, but Summer did not suit her.

When we then rescued Pepper - he was called Pepper and it suited him, so we just adapted it to sergeant Pepper, to put our spin on it.

And Mulan didn't have a name they weren't fussed with her at all!

So i think it depends on the situation. With dogs etc i'd always make sure they sounded similar so they don't get confused.

[September]

I've never put much thought into it, but Aine was already 7 months old when I got her and I changed her name from Ginger. So I can't say I'm against it lol :P

[shiny]

When I went to get Teddy from the gumtree ad I didn't even ask his name because I didn't think it made any difference what it used to be - I thought we would choose a name for him ourselves . Bubble had a similar-sounding name to Bubble in the p@h adoption centre but I changed it a bit to Bubble cos I thought it was nicer. My daughter's Chinese Monty came from p@h adoption with that name & it really suited him so it stayed

[shazd84]

Jackson's original name was 'Barry' in the adoption centre. But he didn't suit it at all, and he obviously prefers Jackson as he answers to it every time!

[SoapyVP]

I kept the name Kiwi. But I changed Chris and Hoy pretty rapidly! I think these were named by the rescue centre rather than the previous owner.

[jesselle]

i've changed all of my rescues... wonton didn't have a name and was only known as 'fatty', emi was called 'twinkle' and kiwi was also a twinkle!

[shiny]

that's so sad when they don't even have names

[kyrilliondaemon]

For us it depends on the situation

Skip and Whizz both kept their names, we saw no reason to change them (although we've since realised that the adoption centre probably changed Whizz's name for the sake of it a week before we got her, are pretty sure she used to be Speedy)

Fwirl, no way on earth were we calling her Candy and fortunately Lucinda (who'd been fostering her) agreed that it needed changing so that was fine lol

Peep - No-one knows what he had been called, so we asked Womblehands to name him for us (she was who we got him from)

Nut - We'd set our hearts on our next ham being a chinese named Quetzalcoatl-Gandaberunda Nut. The name had to be "fun" for the ham who was getting Skip's old cage and lion. We agreed that it'd either be a breeder ham or a young rescue. The owner never told us his name, so it becoming Nut seemed fine. We added Cocijo when we met him because he quickly taught us that he's a rain god in disguise lol

[lucyeleanor]

I have renamed all of my rescues because I think it's nice to give them a fresh start, since so many of them come from bad homes. They tend to learn their names pretty quickly no matter what and all of them have been 5+ months old.

Poppy was previously called Bingo (Because the owners liked playing Bingo on Facebook when they got her).

Nutmeg and Pumpkin were called Charles and Dickens.

Daisy was called Speeder (Because she ran on her wheel a lot when they got her).

Beth has renamed all of her hamsters too.

Patrick was called Alvin (Because the daughter watched Alvin and the Chipmunks and named all the hamsters Alvin)

Pip was called The Hamster.