05-Mar-2017 | Milku
The lack of a name wasn't something that I'd lost any sleep over. But having a name might lead to some disturbed naps...those humans of mine seem to like to say it out loud quite a lot.
I suppose I should be excited. It's not every day you get a new name. My humans put a lot of effort into deciding what it should be so it must be something very important to them.
The big humans chipped in with some dreadful suggestions. "Hammy the Hamster", "Ronnie the Rodent", oh please. Then the small humans got down to some serious thinking.
The smallest one looked at my reddish coloured fur and mentioned 'Weasley". I think she gets easily confused and can't identify her rodents yet.
Someone said "Butterball". She'd got a long list of hamster names off the Internet and wanted to call me something cute. But before she could read out the entire list, her sister said my colours reminded her of "cookies and milk", whatever they are. That took them into a discussion about how 'kooky' means 'strange' and they didn't want me to have a name like that. "Milky" was next on the table, but someone argued that I wasn't completely white so that wasn't a suitable name either.
It was looking like this might take some time...by the time I woke up I could hear them saying "Milku" and looking at me expectantly. Ah, it seemed the decision had been made. They told me later that there had been some dispute about the spelling of my new name. One of the small humans wanted it to be "Milkoo", but the others overruled her. Quite right, Milku sounds a lot more distinguished.
Postcript: It seems they (accidentally) chose a name with historical overtones. Great! They "Googled" my new name and told me they found this on Wikipedia
"Abimilku (also spelled Abi-Milku or Abimilki) around 1347 BC held the rank of Prince of Tyre (called "Surru" in the letters), during the period of the Amarna letters correspondence (1350-1335 BC). He is the author of ten letters to the Egyptian pharaoh, EA 146-155 (EA for 'el Amarna'). In letter EA 147, Pharaoh Akhenaten confirmed him as ruler of Tyre upon the death of his father, and in EA 149, referred to him with the rank of rabisu (general)."