Kiyomi Rowe often hears her name mispronounced or sometimes forgotten altogether. “They pronounce it Naomi, Kaiomi, sometimes Kimmy,” she says. And she doesn't mind. “Whatever name they give me, I'll respond.”
She's less forgiving when friends and acquaintances forget the name of her dog, Shar-Pei: “They always say Bruno,” she says, to which she responds: “'No, it's Brutus!' The dog doesn't care, but I do.”
Rowe is a stylist at Al's Barber Shop, a popular barbershop in Boulder near the University of Colorado campus. On a recent morning, she was engaged in a heated discussion with fellow stylists and a few customers about a sensitive subject: “Should I remember the names of my friends' pets? And what's the etiquette?”
“That's a big question,” says stylist Jen Himes, who admits that she sometimes gets the names wrong, and it torments her. “I've gotten the pet name wrong so many times. I'll be like, 'What about Pookie?' and they'll be like, 'It's Rufus!'”
“Most people laugh,” she says, “but some say, 'That's offensive.'”
Ultimately, she added, there's a good way to determine whether or not you feel obligated to remember a pet's name: “It depends on how important the pet is to your friend,” she said.
At the barber shop (which happens to be a reporter's regular haunt), there was widespread agreement with that assessment. The conversation was mostly about dogs, with several people saying that dogs are different from other pets in that they get taken outside for walks, and therefore should have more name recognition than their more private animal companions.
“That's cat discrimination!” countered Himes, who laughed and suggested she wasn't too worried — even she didn't always name her tuxedo cat Cosmos.
“I call her Kitty,” she said.
Al Urbanowski, owner of Al's Barbershop, has found that another important factor in whether or not you should remember the names of your friends' pets is how important they are to you. Urbanowski, 58, still remembers the name of his best friend's dog when he was nine years old: Whiskey. Urbanowski now lives in a neighborhood full of dogs, but he says that because he doesn't have close relationships with his neighbors, he has trouble remembering both dog and human names.
Urbanowski noted that our relationships change as we age, and so do what we need to remember and what we can remember. At 25, Urbanowski said, his dog accompanied him on hikes and other outings with friends and was a big part of his friendships.
“Once I started having kids, I had trouble saying the dog's name,” he says. “Learning the dog's name is still a priority, but it's taken a back seat.”
The barber group said that while people trying to remember the names of their friends' pets are to blame, the blame may also lie with pet-owning friends who could choose memorable pet names.
“The funnier the name, the easier it is to remember,” says Law, “like Derek.”
Is Derek memorable? Yes, she insisted.
“Luke Skywalker,” Hymes replied, remembering the name of a client's dog who was with her.
“Big Tuna,” Al's stylist Madisyn Crandell said, after one of her mother's two English bulldogs. (The other, Lucy, was deemed less memorable by the group.)
“Doug,” said Jason Owens, who stood dutifully nearby while his 11-year-old son, Ryder, got his haircut. Doug is the name of his friend's corgi. “There's no way I'm going to forget a name like Doug,” Owens said. But he added that if Doug were a person's name, he might forget it.
Recently, the Owens' Rottweiler, Darby, died. Owens said most of his friends didn't remember his name, but they did remember his nickname, Cheeky.
“She was the sweetest dog,” Owens says. “Stupid as a rock, but also the sweetest dog.” He didn't care when friends called Darby stupid: “I would say, 'Yeah, you're right. She's stupid as a rock.'”
Some people have a hard time forgetting their pets' names once they've been forgotten. Christian Huerta, a receptionist at Al's and owner of a pit bull mix named Frida, had a friend who repeatedly called his dog Freya. Huerta came up with a plan.
“When she was coming, I kept texting her, saying, 'Frida is excited to see you,' and I spelled it Frida,” Huerta said. “And then my friend said, 'Freyja!' and I was freaking out.”
“Maybe it's not that serious,” Huerta said of the experience. “Maybe I'm just too sensitive,” she said, likening it to forgetting something else important, like a birthday.
“I love my dog so much, so I guess that's what bothers me,” she said.