I just came back from sitting on the front step with Matty and Ezra Schwartzentruper and their little niece Rebecca (who was gleeful and despondent by turns as the cat submitted to being held for awhile and then escaped), one of 17 Amish families who’ve moved here in the last two years.
I discussed the naming of animals with Ezra. He reported that they name horses, cows, and sometimes dogs, but they haven’t gotten around to naming their cow yet.
I pointed out that this isn’t something you can be too busy to do. You couldn’t say, “I didn’t get a chance to name the cow because I had to bring in the hay.” Ezra admitted that was so.
I told him that I have two animals, both of which have names, Lucky and Jack. He didn’t seem at all surprised or bewildered (unlike most Amish I’ve told this) when I explained that Lucky and Jack are rats.
Next time I visit them (which will be Monday to get some more of their tomatoes and melons) I’ll be interested to find out if they’ve corrected their oversight and named the cow. And I’ll bring Lucky, who loves to go visiting. (No cat jokes, please. I’ll deal with her, and Lucky will be fine.)
Please, everyone, suggest names. Then, if they haven’t named her by Monday evening, I can offer to name her for them. At no charge, of course.
This is a Jersey cow who’s extremely friendly. I haven’t been around cows a lot, but she seems like an especially sweet natured animal. I would love to be the one who named her.
Frigga would be my first choice, but being a Norse goddess, it may be better to stay with names that would be acceptable to the Amish like Mary, Rebecca, Sarah, Katie, or Annie.
The neighboring farmers all laughed when I named our cattle. I figured who wants to be know by the number of your ear tag?
Most of the names were based on something about them-
here’s just a few that come to mind…
Muley( really ugly long head)
Little Roamer (bad to jump the fence in spring and roam)
Big Teat (one of the first to be sold of the cattle we inherited from my father-in-law. She always had to be milked after calving because the calf couldn’t nurse-beef cattle do not take kindly to milking so this was a major ordeal requiring ropes and lots of nerve) One year of this and she was gone.
Sugar Jaws- a Guernsey that poured milk, raised fantastic calves when bred to a Charolais, and lived to be well into her twenties, we even kept her after she quit calving because she would mother orphaned calves even if she couldn’t feed them
Eunice- she had a “topknot” just like the Carol Burnett character
Stella- she was a “leader” cow that the others would follow and she would come when called- I just wanted to be able to go out and holler at the top of my lungs “S-T-E-L-L-A” , ala Streetcar Named Desire"
I had a dog named “Soda” for a while–she had a lovely, bubbly personality and it suited her totally. Maybe too well; she got away from a carpenter I had working on my place (his story) while I was at work, or thought my edict (“No more running loose across the highway to visit the neighbours”) was mean, and would ignore it until shortly before I was due home (my sneaking suspicion) and did, alas, go to visit the lady across the highway under the brow of what my other neighbour had warned me was a ‘dog-killing hill’. He was right.
The dog after was Casper, the one in my avatar photo. I named him, but his name was never as apt as Soda’s.
the black angus bull that our next door neighbor had when growing up had to be named “g_d damned”.
Mr. Honerlaw would always be saying “g_d damned bull got out of the fence again”. “g_d damned bull got hit by a car again” (his usual escape escapades took place at about midnight - in the country, at midnight, a black angus doesn’t show up real well in headlights). “g_d damned bull ripped up someone’s front yard again”.
This thread got me to thinking about cows. I remember the time my father was gassing up the car on a family trip when I was 3 or 4, and I took the opportunity to fall off a fence next to the gas station. Right into a cow plop.
It got me thinking of Elsie in particular. Was she ever a real cow? Or was her picture on milk cartons just a glimmer of long-gone fame in TV commercials? Turns out she has a nice mention on Roadside America. Who knew?
Wow! I didn’t know Borden’s Milk was American-owned. I remember the milk van coming up the street every morning with Elsie the Cow painted on the side.
When I was a teenager I used to work part-time at a local grocery store. The assistant manager also ran a farm. He had terrible luck with bulls. One that he purchased had no interest in cows whatsoever. It’s name (inevitably) was Gaylord.
The Amish shy away from anything that might be interpreted as ostentatious or attention getting. There’s an almost Buddhist non-self centeredness about their approach that’s very refreshing to encounter.
The Amish animals whose names I’ve been told are two standard bred buggy horses named Nancy and Alice, a Belgian draft horse named Henry, and a Percheron draft horse named Ben.
So far, my favorite suggestions are Katie and Annie. I also like Betsy. If we can come up with a longer list of names we think are Amish suitable, I’ll bring them the whole list and see if I can get them to pick one.
