One problem with raising goats forever is you run out of names. That happened to me long ago. So periodically I ask the readers of my Kidding Pen column in United Caprine News for help. I did so when I was in a quandary over D-Anne’s doelings. As always, the goat community came through with about a jillion names.
Margo Paul of Colorado, Melinda Tucker of Oklahoma, Caroline Lawson from Texas, and Sue Rucker out of Ohio contributed many D-Lightful names. (D-Lightful was a kid of D-Anne's from several years earlier, along with D-Ziner Jean.)
However, the kids remained unnamed for quite some time. Not because none of the names were good but rather because I was overwhelmed by the number of excellent choices. So I continued to call the doelings "D-Stupid One" and "D-Wild Thing". "Stupid" was the one that was always crying on the opposite side of the feeder from her mom, sister and brother, because she was too dumb to walk around it. Or she went out with the herd to graze, then realized about fifteen minutes after everyone else had gone back to the barn that she was alone. D-Stupid One stood and screamed, having no clue, apparently, how she got out there.
D-Wild Thing would probably not have been so wild if she were not being driven batty by her sister's wails. I know I was. Perhaps I should have named D-Stupid One "D-Mented". Or, as Caroline suggested, "D-Linquent".
Caroline worked on my naming problem during her 40 milecommute to work each day and came up with two of my favorites: D-Agony and D-Ecstasy. But what if I sold D-Ecstasy and was left with only D-Agony?
A legal secretary, Caroline also sent legal names: D-Jure, D-Minimus, D-Note, D-Novo, D-Pose, D-Facto, and D-Marche. The jury is still out on those.
A good candidate from Melinda's list was D-Sire which I converted to D-Zire and then lengthened to D-Zirable. I could have called her Zira for short. That would definitely not have been D-Stupid One, as she was anything but desirable. Maybe D-Wild Thing could have been D-Zirable (with enough handling) and D-Stupid One could have been a D-Zaster, since she already was. Zira and Zaster. Not bad.
Margot thought up pretty names: D-Angelina and D-Monae (or, perhaps, D-Monet). I already had an Angel line, but I really liked D-Monae. I considered naming the other one D-Matisse.
And then there were Sue's contributions to consider, all forty-three of them. D-Tour might be good for D-Stupid One, but again it was not a terribly saleable name. My favorites from Sue's extensive list were D-Va and D-Votion. (D-Anne already had a D-Vine, which was another of Sue's names.)
Or perhaps I could have gone French and called one of them D-Teh Moi Pourquoi, as in the song from South Pacific, "Dites Mois Pourquoi …" ("Tell Me Why…") The song wants to know why life is beautiful. I wanted to know why this kid was so stupid. Or I could ave changed it to "Tell Me Where" (Dites Moi Ou) since she seemed to be always asking that question. "Where's Mom? Where'd everybody go?"
"D-Teh Moi Ou" is unpronounceable, but what the hey.
In looking through my records for that year of 2003, I see that I settled on D-Ona and D-Odora, heaven only knows why. Maybe I did not want to hurt anyone’s feelings by not selecting a name they chose. More likely, I simply forgot about the raft of suggested names by the time I got around to naming the doelings and picked whatever came into my head.
I milked D-Anne through for several years after that before breeding her again, maybe because I did not want to have to pick a name if she had a doeling. In 2006 she produced D-Lovely, who was.
I will spare you the “Lovely” kid names.
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