Naming Your Car

Naming a car is an essential thing to do. Most people just go with referring to their automobile with names like “The Honda”, “The Red Car” or “The Truck”. You can do better than that, people, come on. I just got rid of my 1994 Jeep Cherokee, aka “The Rhinosaur” and I have recently been thinking about names for vehicles.

When naming a vehicle it is important that you actually use the name. Thus the name should not be stupid. Do not name the car based on its color. This is very important. Unless the car has a very unusual paint job, do not use it’s color as the basis for it’s name. The best names come from experiences, non-color traits of the vehicle and things that you have heard elsewhere that can apply. My Rhinosaur was named after a Soundgarden song, but, not just simply after the song. The name Rhinosaur sounds tough and invokes the image of a huge beast ready to charge at you. The Rhinosaur had been in 2 tornadoes back in Texas and had been hit by a trampoline in one of them. The outside of the car was covered in dents and scratches. The engine was an inline six cylinder engine which made the car move faster than one would think it would. There was even a Texas Longhorn logo in the back window which adds to the charging beast thought. These things all lead me to think of rhinos or dinosaurs.

Next, resist the urge to name the car immediately when you get it. It is not like a boat that must have a name before it can head out to sea. Allow some time to have some experiences with the vehicle and learn how it handles and how it treats you. When a defining moment for a vehicle happens you will know it. I have had a Jeep Compass for a year or so now and haven’t really had a good name until the other day when it snowed like crazy. That thing zips right through the snow. I watched three Suburbans in a row try to get up a hill near my house while I waited on a side street. None of them made it and they all turned away back down to the bottom of the hill in shame. I headed up and made it to the top just fine. So I am heavily considering naming the vehicle after Balto, the lead dog in the last leg of the 1925 serum run to Nome. While waiting for a name to come to you, it is perfectly acceptable to have a temporary name or to just say, “it is not named yet”.

Multiple names can be allowed but no more than two. In high school I would drive around my family’s 15 seater Dodge Ram van. I saw Shaquille Oneal on TV one day showing off a van that he had put speakers in. He called it “The Van of Death”. I started calling our van “The Van of Social Death”. A short time later I caught part of some TV show starring Sinbad. He was going to have to get a van to haul kids around in and he didn’t want to be a mega van person. That’s when our van took the moniker “The MegaVan”. Every once in a while it would still be jokingly called the Van of Social Death and people knew what was being talked about.

Be sure to always be aware of what vehicles are called in your house or amongst your friends. Years after the MegaVan was stolen, and no doubt employed in the human smuggling trade, my mother made reference to a vehicle called “The Woolly Mammoth”. She was actually referring to the MegaVan. You cannot rename a vehicle that has been given a name that is in wide use amongst others. It just will not work, so don’t try. It is also disrespectful of those that have come up with the previous names. So be sure to know what the names are or you will almost surely commit a party foul. I think my younger siblings similarly renamed our Honda Civic Wagon from the name that I had previously given it, “The Millenium Falcon”. There is a great story behind that name that I will share in the near future.