[SallyintNorth]

One of my porkers is called "The One without a Name", or just "You", to her face.  Mostly I name the ones I can tell apart and will have a lot of interaction with.  I find it helps me to regard them as individuals and notice things about them as individuals, and it certainly helps me and BH to know who we are talking about!

I don't suffer with too much angst when they go off - a little sadness, sure, and I grieve the ones I have particularly liked, but I would always have known their destiny and you can't keep them all as pets!  And I would a gazillion percent prefer to eat something I know has had a brilliant, well-cared-for, stress-free life than a piece of meat, however good, of unknown provenance.

Brave of you to 'fess about the bike, colliewoman...    I name all my cars but not, for some reason, quad bikes.  Some tractors deserve names.  I even named a table, once...

[suziequeue]

We called one of our weaners Sausage and the other Bacon. Still living up to their namesake now :-))

Our breeding ewes are called 1,2,3,4 and 5 although number 1 is usually nicknamed Mrs Madam because she's such a madam. Then there's number 1's daughter and number 4's daughter.....

I call my husband Paul and he has names for all his cars ;-)

[Fleecewife]

we give everything names......
if we are going to eat them they deserve a really good life and the pigs and lambs come when called.
even when we haven't got food. Blackie (our entire lamb ram) would often come over for a cuddle and snuggle- he still went off to the freezer.
would seem more heartless to me not to let them have names when their lives are so short
(although the table birds are all mrs chick cos i can't tell them apart  )
Mx

Well said.   Any animal we are going to eat deserves our respect just as much as an animal we intend to keep, and that respect can be demonstrated by recognising it as an individual, which may mean giving it a name.  We find it easier to name our animals rather than go into a long description to identify a particular one.   The name makes no difference to which ones are slaughtered, but knowing from an early age which ones are destined for slaughter does make it easier.  When we have to change our mind about keeping one, sending it off can be more difficult.
The supermarket shelves are full of thousands and thousands of poor nameless hunks of meat, which come from animals which lived there lives as production units, so we prefer that all of ours are identifiable as individuals - and like princesspiggy and native americans and many others, we give our thanks to the animal we are eating  .

[colliewoman]

Brave of you to 'fess about the bike, colliewoman...    I name all my cars but not, for some reason, quad bikes.  Some tractors deserve names.  I even named a table, once...

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRjevYLL-cKo_4cS-oAr9-SKg6wkej90Iox_b-Q6dat53OlHAUWRA

She's called Delilah, and is the same as this except Delilah has swept back bars  and generally got a trailer behind with a couple of bales of hay on!!
I think I am now officially the village nutter

[mcginty]

We name most of the animals we keep, they know they are safe.

We are veggie.     

[Lesley Silvester]

My first male goat kid was always going to be called Curry (and Casserole if there were two).  It's nice to have a name to call him and it keeps my mind focused on where he is going to end up.

My bike is called Polly-Etta (it's an appollo etienne) and our tandem is called Daisy II as in a bicycle made for two.  (The II is because the dog is also called Daisy).

[bazzais]

We tend to name most our sheep - I've tried to not name the boys, but sometimes they 'are' their name and there is no forgetting it then.   We tend to name them 'as we go' as you say with any full time interaction or events that get us to spend that little bit of extra time with them.  First time lambers, last lambers, ones that get ill, ones that approach you, tag numbers you find funny (007 or Mrs Bond is a loverly ewe lol)

I am a hypocrite as a meat eater, in that I cant bring myself to eat one of my own - I'm quite new to farming and still have not got over that hurdle - I admit that I would find it easier to stomach if 'it' didnt have a name.

Baz

[jaykay]

Ok, expanding on my 'animals that will be eaten don't have names', I suppose in fact they do, since of course they're individual and cared for, but I stick to names like Little Black and Little Brown (the wether goat kids) for eating animaks, rather than names like Rowan and Ellie, the breeding goats.

I used to explain to my sheep-farming neighbours that my Rough Fell ewes' names were all shorthand, since it was much faster to say 'three-spot or halfie' than it was to say 'that two-shear we got from Mr Harrison'. Roughs could all have names since their face markings meant you could tell them apart easily. I'm working on telling apart three of my moorit Shetlands still.

Interesting, to me at least, that the cockerel who actually had his own name (Levi, can't remember why) is still pottering around the chookyard in retirement, whereas his less-named peers (Mr Buff, Mr Maran) are no longer. Did I name him because I took to him somehow, or did his name make him more of a 'person'.

Never named a quad bike 

[Fowgill Farm]

we give everything names......
if we are going to eat them they deserve a really good life and the pigs and lambs come when called.
even when we haven't got food. Blackie (our entire lamb ram) would often come over for a cuddle and snuggle- he still went off to the freezer.
would seem more heartless to me not to let them have names when their lives are so short
(although the table birds are all mrs chick cos i can't tell them apart  )
Mx

Well said.   Any animal we are going to eat deserves our respect just as much as an animal we intend to keep, and that respect can be demonstrated by recognising it as an individual, which may mean giving it a name.  We find it easier to name our animals rather than go into a long description to identify a particular one.   The name makes no difference to which ones are slaughtered, but knowing from an early age which ones are destined for slaughter does make it easier.  When we have to change our mind about keeping one, sending it off can be more difficult.
The supermarket shelves are full of thousands and thousands of poor nameless hunks of meat, which come from animals which lived there lives as production units, so we prefer that all of ours are identifiable as individuals - and like princesspiggy and native americans and many others, we give our thanks to the animal we are eating  .

Agree with both of you, the worst time i had sending pigs to slaughter was 3 i never named for some reason, i balled my eyes out when they went because i thought that when they got to piggy heaven God wouldn't know who they were so all pigs even fatteners have names sometimes they're only Biff 1,2 & 3 or spot, big ears and black eye but at least something to identify them. I also have a tractor called Kubby and a pick up called Ardeeowe.
Mandy 

[Anke]

Well only my pedigree breeding animals have proper names, all homebred ones have to be approved by my daughters! Commercial ewes often just go with a descriptive name (like Beltex - I have only one Beltex and Beltex's daughter...). Female chickens and meat birds never get named, cockerels do get a name, the current one is Rupert (but he will still be eaten when his time is up), weaners only get descriptive names to tell them apart, and male goats intended for meat are in order of birth - BillyBoy, Billy2, Billy3 etc etc. We have no problems eating our named (pedigree) tups, if and when I do not sell them on but curry and casserole them...

My Shetlands (only the females get registered) have their names starting with the same letters as their dam, so Rosebud's daughters are Rowan and Rachel, and my (homebred) goats have all proper girls' names, just because I like them.... like Amanda, Bryony, Beatrix.... All female kids in my first year of breeding started with A, then B and so on.... my children are already foreseeing difficulties with the letter X... but by that time they will hopefully be breeding their own goats....

[Mel Rice]

My animals often have names too....but as others do purly to identify the individual. Mrs Blackface is easier than saying the adult sheep with the blackest face. The lambs get names when they are small but often grow out of them. Sooty and Spotty last year....both now white though Sooty has a full black face whereas Spotty is more mottled. The previous years Freckle and Domino ended up as Mrs Blackface and packs in the freezer I cant remember which way round it was!

[princesspiggy]

my friend who ran a riding school had a spare pony with no name, and she was called "spare" for years!
lol

[Womble]

Yes, we name everything too, but that doesn't stop any of our animals from meeting their final destiny.

We even have a trailer hitch lock which has somehow been christened "Alfred", although I realise we may have taken things too far there! 

[SallyintNorth]

Okay, since we're baring all...

The table was called Ugas, which was the name of the male lion in the film Born Free, because the table was made of oak from Longleat.

My Rayburn was called Bessie for no real reason, but she sure was a great cook.  (Should'a called her Beatty, after Mrs Beaton, I guess!)

Cars often get named in relation to their reg plates - JAM was Artie (Jammie Dodger -> Artful Dodger -> Artie), FFC was Charlie Vulpecula (Fox Fox Charlie, black as the night and a star of a car - Vulpecula is the proper name of a constellation in the Southern Hemisphere colloquially known as The Fox); I've had 3 little Peugeots, the first named Pica, in recognition of her size, the second was Pico as it was a boy, and the current is Peeka, as it is parked in an open-fronted shed where it plays Peek-a-Boo with you...

The tractor I did name was Maisie the Mighty Massey.

As others have said, stock are mainly named to make it easier to refer to them and often relates to their origin and/or breeding - Daisy had a Bazadaise calf when she came (he was called Barry, of course - he wasn't Liverpudlian nor a footballer, so Bazza seemed inappropriate somehow..), Ridley the bull came from a farm of that name, Nellie is from The Knells.  Or maybe their behaviour - Bomber is a very protective mum, and has 811 which looks like B11 tatooed on her rump; Scorpion used to run around with his tail curled up over his back; Gaby the pig was extremely voluble, and so on.

Of my first 10 choox, 5 died within not many months (and these were bought in three different tranches), so I named the next one Arfer as it seemed she had 'alf a chance o' living.

But in all my years, I have never named nor wanted to name a tow hitch. 

[Lostlambs]

Just read thru and so glad there are so many like me! The neighbors here poke a lot of fun at me . I not only name mine but they all have a pic on their sheet-so I can remember who they all are and their history in my dotty old age .I class pretty well all animals as living feeling creatures and meat comes from the same whether in a mass feedlot or not. I agree with giving them the best life possible and respecting the fact that my life is sustained by them. I name them so I can identify them easier and the ones that stay on I get to know better but whether they have a name or not doesn't change the fact that I'm still having them for supper. I give thanks name or not. :wave:Most producers I've met have a deep regard for the animals they work with everyday, sometimes more so than the two legged variety