# Do You Name Your Car?



## TarionzCousin (Jan 15, 2014)

Do you?

Have you always done so? 

In my experience, I can't recall one male friend or acquaintance who has named his car, but I can think of several females who have. Is this true among people you know or is it just me?


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## Hand of Evil (Jan 15, 2014)

My mom calls my Hyundai Tucson the Snake-mobile, she calls me a snake (always has).


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## tuxgeo (Jan 15, 2014)

Some of them. (And where's the poll option for that?) 

My first car was a 1960 VW sedan. I never gave it a name. 

When the VW stopped working, I got a used 1967 slant-six Dodge pickup, which I gave a name based on Roger Zelazny's _Isle of the Dead_. I probably wouldn't have bothered to name it if there hadn't been the presence of feminine persuasion. 

When the axle came apart on the pickup, I drove my then-girlfriend's old 1971 Plymouth Valiant, which was also named -- but I didn't name that car: the girlfriend had named it. 

No names yet for the used Toyota Tercel I got in the 1990s, nor for the used Ford Ranger pickup that I bought after the Tercel, using the Tercel as a trade-in.


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## Abraxas (Jan 15, 2014)

All my cars are named Jennifer.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jan 15, 2014)

I know a few guys who have.

Personally, I did name one car.  It was my parents' brand new Chevy Impala.  I named it "Bob".  On the creamy white leather on the back of the driver's seat.

In ink.












I was 5.


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## Scrivener of Doom (Jan 15, 2014)

I did but only once.

It was black. It was fast. It was like driving on rails when it came to cornering. The numberplate included the letters HNU.

And thus Attila (the dylsexic Hun) was born.


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## billd91 (Jan 15, 2014)

I don't name mine, but a friend names his with our help. It started with the brown junker that he called the Brown Mech. Then it was the Bloody Mary (it was red and had some… quirks). Then it was replaced with a car that was his grandmother's and had a Jesus on the dash so it was the Holy Warrior. Then it was the yellow Camaro that became the Tequila Sunrise. Since then, his cars have been more sensible and haven't cried out for naming.


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## Jan van Leyden (Jan 15, 2014)

I don't, but two of min/our three cars over the years have been named by my then girlfriend and my wife respectively.

The green metallic '76 Audi 80 was named Laubfrosch (tree frog) and our '93 Toyota Carina is called Ottokar (rather obscure Gemren name which sounds very much like "auto-car"),


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## Dioltach (Jan 15, 2014)

I have a yellow Seat Leon, which I sometimes call Leonie. (It started as a joke: I'd bought a ViaMichellin satnav, and decided that if I was going to following yet another woman's instructions I'd better give her a name. So the satnav became Michelle. And then the car got a name too.)

Male friends refer to my car as the "yellow canary". Female friends call it the "yellow banana".


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## Jhaelen (Jan 15, 2014)

Wow, I'd have never thought it was so common to give your car a name. The thought would never occur to me. I mean, are you also naming your pc, toaster or washing machine?


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## Scrivener of Doom (Jan 15, 2014)

Jhaelen said:


> Wow, I'd have never thought it was so common to give your car a name. The thought would never occur to me. I mean, are you also naming your pc, toaster or washing machine?




I have yet to meet a person with the same sort of emotional attachment to a PC, toaster, washing machine or similar that other people I know have to their cars.

Except for members of the Apple cult. But they probably don't name their iGadgets because they plan to upgrade them after a few weeks so why bother?


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## Herobizkit (Jan 15, 2014)

I like pie.

But I did name my old Dodge Shadow 'Tangerine'.  It wasn't that color but I liked the sound of the name and it WAS my first car.

My current car is a nameless silver Chevy Cobalt.


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## Jhaelen (Jan 15, 2014)

Scrivener of Doom said:


> I have yet to meet a person with the same sort of emotional attachment to a PC, toaster, washing machine or similar that other people I know have to their cars.



Well, sometimes I'm talking to (or at?) my PC, typically in exasperation at something not working... but otherwise I'm really not emotionally attached to any device, tool, or gadget. 

But really, why cars? What's so different about them? For me it's just something that gets me faster from A to B.


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## Scrivener of Doom (Jan 15, 2014)

Jhaelen said:


> Well, sometimes I'm talking to (or at?) my PC, typically in exasperation at something not working... but otherwise I'm really not emotionally attached to any device, tool, or gadget.
> 
> But really, why cars? What's so different about them? For me it's just something that gets me faster from A to B.




It's one of those things where, if you don't get it, you simply don't get it.

Queen got it.... [video=youtube;F9ZAhHDv2Oc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9ZAhHDv2Oc[/video]


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## Scorpio616 (Jan 15, 2014)

The "Old Car" is nicknamed "Cold Storage" because I store stuff in it.
The "New Car" is nicknamed "The Junkmobile" because the back seat is filled with random purchases and empty packaging.


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## Morrus (Jan 15, 2014)

The Dogmobile, on account of the dog having pretty much trashed it.


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## Hand of Evil (Jan 15, 2014)

Did see a Mini Cooper with a vanity plate: "Bradley", thought that was cleaver and cute.


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## nerfherder (Jan 15, 2014)

Scrivener of Doom said:


> It's one of those things where, if you don't get it, you simply don't get it.




I love my car, but have never felt the urge to name it.  It's usually just "the car", "my car" or "the silver one", depending on the context.


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## Scrivener of Doom (Jan 15, 2014)

nerfherder said:


> I love my car, but have never felt the urge to name it.  It's usually just "the car", "my car" or "the silver one", depending on the context.




In context, my comment was in response to a comment about not being able to understand having an emotional attachment to a car.

Not naming it? That I can understand. I only did it once because the number plate suggested I should: HNU => HUN => ATTILA. And it was dark, fast and mean....


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## nerfherder (Jan 15, 2014)

Scrivener of Doom said:


> In context, my comment was in response to a comment about not being able to understand having an emotional attachment to a car.
> 
> Not naming it? That I can understand. I only did it once because the number plate suggested I should: HNU => HUN => ATTILA. And it was dark, fast and mean....




Apologies for missing the nuance - I was racing through the thread at 100MPH


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## Bullgrit (Jan 15, 2014)

I've named two of my cars through the 30 years I've been driving. But I rarely actually referred to the cars by their name. My first car was an orange Honda Civic, I occassionally referred to as "The Tangerine." It was destroyed. In the early days of my family, I had a red Ford Escort which I sometimes called the "The Radio Flyer" -- it was a little red wagon  Really, I probably used those names maybe a dozen times during my ownership. 

I've owned cars that I was much more attached to than either of them. My favorite car, a blue Nissan 200SX, never got a name.



			
				Jhaelen said:
			
		

> I mean, are you also naming your pc, toaster or washing machine?



I worked at a computer graphics/animation school where all the classroom computers were named after Lord of the Rings characters, Star Trek characters, Star Wars characters, and more. Each computer had a printed label with its name.

Most offices I've worked in named the various printers. Currently I print to Natasha or Boris.

Bullgrit


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## Scrivener of Doom (Jan 15, 2014)

nerfherder said:


> Apologies for missing the nuance - I was racing through the thread at 100MPH




Ahhh, you get the attraction.... 

I must admit, I really miss high speed drives on winding roads.

The roads here are so bad that most motorbikes don't go over 30 kph because the concrete - NB: not bitumen - is so badly cracked that you will come off your bike if you go any faster because the vibrations are so bad. Of course, being Asia the only thing worse than the quality of the roads is the quality of the drivers who think driving on the wrong side of the road during peak hour is a valid shortcut.

Net result: I own my first ever secondhand car here and it bears the scars of numerous bumps and niggles that result from simply being in traffic. It has no name. It has no identity. It's just a car.


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## Zombie_Babies (Jan 15, 2014)

Cars are already named so if you need a way to refer to it, well, the manufacturer already gave you one.  I don't name cars.

We've got three vehicles and they are referred to as 'the truck', 'the Mustang' and 'the scooby' ... cuz my wife has a Subaru and she's a chick.


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## Man in the Funny Hat (Jan 15, 2014)

I have typically not given names to my car, though my current vehicle has two ("Red" and "Fugly") and I seldom use either one.  My friends have been much more likely to name their cars.  I've known a Sissy (derived from the license plate), Nemo (because one wiper arm is much shorter than the other), and others, but my favorite was always the Exxon Valdez. So named because it was very large and used much gas and one side had 5 or 6 huge curled gashes where it had been sideswiped by the lugnuts from the wheel of a semi-truck.


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## Desdichado (Jan 15, 2014)

My car is Brannich Blacksmoke.


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## Abraxas (Jan 16, 2014)

Jhaelen said:


> Well, sometimes I'm talking to (or at?) my PC, typically in exasperation at something not working... but otherwise I'm really not emotionally attached to any device, tool, or gadget.
> 
> But really, why cars? What's so different about them? For me it's just something that gets me faster from A to B.



Why do people name ships? or hurricanes? or monster trucks?


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## Scott DeWar (Jan 16, 2014)

I like pi, cake is a lye


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## Homicidal_Squirrel (Jan 16, 2014)

Abraxas said:


> Why do people name ships?



Not sure, but I'm betting it makes it far easier to determine what ship, and who might be calling in a distress call from out at sea. 


> or hurricanes?



To avoid confusion when there are several hurricanes. 


> or monster trucks?



Helps pull in advertisers and generates money for the owners. Plus, it's always better to hear "Hear comes Grave Digger!!!!" rather than "Here comes a hearse painted up as a goth-whore with big wheels!!!"


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## Abraxas (Jan 16, 2014)

Homicidal_Squirrel said:


> Not sure, but I'm betting it makes it far easier to determine what ship, and who might be calling in a distress call from out at sea.



They could just have a number and a classification (like aircraft) - however, It's tradition - something to do with superstition and that it protected the sailors from harm.


Homicidal_Squirrel said:


> To avoid confusion when there are several hurricanes.



Then why not earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, wild fires or other disastrous natural events?


Homicidal_Squirrel said:


> Helps pull in advertisers and generates money for the owners. Plus, it's always better to hear "Hear comes Grave Digger!!!!" rather than "Here comes a hearse painted up as a goth-whore with big wheels!!!"



Sounds good - but if I'm gonna name a monster truck I might as well name my car.


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## Hand of Evil (Jan 16, 2014)

Abraxas said:


> Then why not earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, wild fires or other disastrous natural events?




They have started naming winter storms but things like earthquakes, tornadoes and tsunamis are limited in life and scope, appearing and disappearing within hours or shorter periods of time.  They then get a name like, Great East Japan Earthquake.  I think wildfires are getting some type of ID these days but not sure.


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## Viking Bastard (Jan 16, 2014)

I don't own a car currently, but I used to own a brown-orange Kia I called variously Kíja (slight pronunciation change so it sounded like a normal Icelandic female name) or The Brown Thunder. 

Before that I owned a small Opel I always called Druslan ("drusla" is a term used for piece of junk cars, among other things) because it was one.

As a kid my family had a red Lada with one white door, which was never referred to as anything but Skjalda, which is a common name for a cow with large spots.

Later we had a Dodge Neon which we called The Yankee, because it was so overwhelmingly american compared to the Lada.

And even later we got a large Opel station wagon which we called Drekinn because driving it felt like you were driving a tank (Drekinn strictly means "the dragon", but tanks are called skriðdreki or "crawling dragon" in Icelandic).



Scrivener of Doom said:


> I have yet to meet a person with the same sort of emotional attachment to a PC, toaster, washing machine or similar that other people I know have to their cars.




Toaster and washing machines, no. PCs? Hell yeah, people do. And their phones too.

My iPhone is named DARKSEID (although I tend to just refer to it as "my phone" more often than not) and my iPad is GALACTUS (and I _do_ refer to it as such). My mini is The Machine. My wife refers to her computer as Kitty, but never named her phone.



Abraxas said:


> Then why not earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, wild fires or other disastrous natural events?.




We name earthquakes. Not with people names, granted, but names nonetheless. For some reason we don't do this with eruptions or avalanches, though. *shrug*


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## Scott DeWar (Jan 16, 2014)

Viking Bastard said:


> . . . . . ð . . . . . .edit . . . . . .
> Toaster and washing machines, no. PCs? Hell yeah, people do. And their phones too.



Viking Bastard, is there an easy way to describe the pronunciation of the aphetic character above?

 I call my computer names, but nothing that is grandma friendly, therefore not typeable on this forum.
To every else, I must admitt, my first car was a 70 ford LTD, red, named Snuffaluppagus. the next car was an 80 Chevy Malibu called the bat mobile.


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## sabrinathecat (Jan 17, 2014)

No. My car is a work-horse, not my identity or phallic crutch.
I use it to get places.

Learned to drive in 1971 cadillac. Was an armored tank. One time a car crashed into the back of us at a stop light. Other car's entire front block was caved in. We lost a paint chip. (really, less than 1/2 square inch)
First car was Ford LTD lemon
replaced with t-bird
replaced with pontiac bonniville.
replaced with current grand prix

Now, if we're talking pie, Lemon Merrainge, with base triple the amount of lemon.


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## Scott DeWar (Jan 17, 2014)

I am so hungrey I could eat 3.141579 pies!


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## tuxgeo (Jan 17, 2014)

sabrinathecat said:


> < snip >
> First car was Ford LTD lemon
> replaced with t-bird
> replaced with pontiac bonniville.
> replaced with current grand prix




They don't make 'em like that any more these days: the last T-bird was the 2005 model year, and Pontiac (the car, not the town) is gone entirely.


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## Desdichado (Jan 17, 2014)

Scott DeWar said:


> Viking Bastard, is there an easy way to describe the pronunciation of the aphetic character above?



The voiced (as opposed to unvoiced) th.  As the th in the or them, not the th from thin or thick.


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## Desdichado (Jan 17, 2014)

Homicidal_Squirrel said:


> Plus, it's always better to hear "Hear comes Grave Digger!!!!" rather than "Here comes a hearse painted up as a goth-whore with big wheels!!!"



Maybe I'll name my car Goth-Whore.  That actually does have a pretty cool ring to it.


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## Zombie_Babies (Jan 17, 2014)

Hobo said:


> Maybe I'll name my car Goth-Whore.  That actually does have a pretty cool ring to it.




Yeah, I think if I named my vehicles Goth Whore would be at the top of the list.  

Hmm ... maybe we should come up with a car naming book.  I mean, those baby name books are big business.  We'll have fun with it, though, and use a lot of stuff like Goth Whore and we'll be sure to throw in the odd Ted and Franklin and Judy, too.


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## Viking Bastard (Jan 17, 2014)

Scott DeWar said:


> Viking Bastard, is there an easy way to describe the pronunciation of the aphetic character above?




Yes, exactly like this:



Hobo said:


> The voiced (as opposed to unvoiced) th.  As the th in the or them, not the th from thin or thick.


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## Scott DeWar (Jan 18, 2014)

like the 'th' of Goth whore, then. got it.


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## Desdichado (Jan 18, 2014)

Scott DeWar said:


> like the 'th' of Goth whore, then. got it.




I see what you did there, but... no.  Like the 'th' of the and this.  Goth-whore has the same th as thin and thick.  Also written sometimes as Þ or thorn.  It's a totally different letter and sound.

Both are from runic Old Norse, Old English, and, obviously, some modern Scandinavian languages.


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## Bullgrit (Jan 18, 2014)

> Like the 'th' of the and this. Goth-whore has the same th as thin and thick. Also written sometimes as Þ or thorn. It's a totally different letter and sound.



Huh? The 'th' is pronounced differently in goth, the, this, thin, thick?

Bullgrit


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## Dioltach (Jan 18, 2014)

Bullgrit said:


> Huh? The 'th' is pronounced differently in goth, the, this, thin, thick?
> 
> Bullgrit




Yup: it's voiced in "the" and "this", it's voiceless in "goth", "thin" and "thick". Basically it's the same difference as between B and P, D and T, Z and S.


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## Scott DeWar (Jan 18, 2014)

ok, I see it. the and this has an almost imperceptible buzz to the sound where goth is soft.


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## Zombie_Babies (Jan 20, 2014)

Bullgrit said:


> Huh? The 'th' is pronounced differently in goth, the, this, thin, thick?
> 
> Bullgrit




Yeah, I was a little surprised by this as well but after thinking about it a bit, I saw the difference.  It's subtle and not something I think we really hear here in the States.


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## Viking Bastard (Jan 20, 2014)

Don't know if it helps at all but 'ð' is sometimes written as 'dh' in English (but with a very soft 'd').

Þ is always at the start of a word while ð is always towards the end. It's like þ hitting the brakes.


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## Scott DeWar (Jan 21, 2014)

You know, I hope I get to use this information someday.

On a side note, I had a Nissan Pathfinder I called The Pathfinder. Does that count?


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## GMMichael (Jan 21, 2014)

TarionzCousin said:


> Do you (name your car)?




What car?


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## TarionzCousin (Jan 21, 2014)

Scott DeWar said:


> On a side note, I had a Nissan Pathfinder I called The Pathfinder. Does that count?



No. 



DMMike said:


> What car?



Did you lose your car again???


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## Scrivener of Doom (Jan 21, 2014)

DMMike said:


> What car?




Dude, where's my car?


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## nerfherder (Jan 22, 2014)

TarionzCousin said:


> No.



Ditto.  That's just the model name.


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## nerfherder (Jan 22, 2014)

I think it's interesting that there are only 28 votes - not many more than the 19 votes when this poll was posted on Circvs Maximvs, which has a fraction of the membership of ENW.
Maybe most of the ENW car enthusiasts are also on CM, or maybe now many ENW members read the Miscellaneous forum?


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