A Dog Named Dog / Real Life

• Any boy with the name of Ben or its derivatives such as Benjamin is this, as "Ben" is a Semitic word that means "son". Modern Hebrew and Arabic still utilize Ben or the alternate pronunciation and anglicization of "Bin" in names, but as a patronymic last name to indicate which family the boy is a son of, so "Ahmed bin Ali" would mean "Ahmed son of Ali" or "Levi ben Gershon" would mean "Levi, son of Gershon." Naming a boy Ben as is common in English thus means he's a "Son named Son." Naming a girl "Bat" or "Bint" would be the equivalent "Daughter named Daughter", but this is uncommon if non existent as no language seems to have taken these words as a first name.
  • This is also true of the Japanese name Ichiro, which means "first son."
• In 1959, the communist government of Bulgaria made the decision to build a large beach resort upon the sunny Black Sea coastline. They called it "Sunny Beach". It bears the same name to this day.
• While leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn MP had a pet cat named "El Gato". This is, of course, Spanish for "The Cat".
• After deciding to change their name from the Washington Redskins due to Values Dissonance, Washington D.C.'s football team became known as the "Washington Football Team" for two seasons while they decided on a new name. They're now known as the Washington Commanders.
  • The same happened to the former Edmonton Eskimos between 2020-2021, before settling on the new permanent name Edmonton Elks.
  • Of course, in soccer/association football, it's extremely common in both Europe and the Americas for clubs to be known as "<City> FC," where FC stands for "football club." In the US, this is sometimes SC for "soccer club." In Latin America, it's common for team names to include "Club Deportivo" ("sports club") or "Club Atletico" ("athletic club").
• Contra Costa County, California—Spanish for "opposite coast". Because the 18th century Spanish building a fort and a mission in what eventually became San Francisco looked across the bay to the opposite coast, and named it Opposite Coast.
• During the English Civil War, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Charles I's nephew and military commander, had an inseparable standard poodle called Pudel.
• Beverley Nichols mentioned in one of his books that his Hungarian neighbours had a cat called Cica — Hungarian for "cat". Hungarian-born photographer Suzanne Szasz also named her cat Cica.
• Courtesy of Youtube, a cat named Cat. Warning: onion-chopping ninjas.
• Used to be the case for the Sun, as well as the Solar System, but terminology has changed, and The Sun is now a proper name for a specific star, and the generic term for a system of planets orbiting a star is now "star system." While other stars can still be referred to poetically as "distant suns," they're usually called by their proper names (e.g. Alpha Centauri, Sirius, HD 206250).
  • Still played straight with Earth's moon, however, which is simply known as "The Moon".
• George Foreman owned a dog named Doggo.
  • As unoriginal as this looks, at least it's more original than the names he gave his five sons (all named George).
• Mariah Carey owned a Jack Russell terrier named "Jack".
• Many monotheists express loyalty to a god they call "God" (though in some religions this is a codified avoidance of saying the god's true name out of respect, rather than this trope). Jehovah's Witnesses are notable for being Christians that avert this.
• There is a shopping mall in St. Matthews, Kentucky, originally named The Mall. To distinguish it from other shopping malls in the area, it was sometimes specified as The Mall in St. Matthews. Its official name is now Mall St. Matthews.
  • There was also a shopping mall called The Mall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It has since changed its name to Putra Place when a new management took over though.
  • On a similar note, there’s a shopping mall in Britain called “The Mall.” It’s just north of Bristol, though sometimes it’s called “The Mall, Cribbs Causeway,” after the area it’s in, and locals will sometimes shorten it down to “Cribbs,” instead.
• A common girl's name is Colleen, the English spelling of Cailin, the Irish word for Girl.
  • Same in Greek: Kore (the derived form Cora is much more common)
• Pueblo, Colorado. "Pueblo" means "town" in Spanish.
• Equineline.com lists at least three racehorses which are named simply "The Horse" or just "Horse".
• Marshal Józef Piłsudski, the leader of Poland (1918-1922 and 1926-1935) had a dog named Pies ("Dog").
  • The marshal's favourite companion, a chestnut mare, is considered one of symbols of pre-war Poland. He called her Kasztanka, which is simply a Polish word for a chestnut mare. Her actual name was Fantazja ("Fantasy"), but that's a fact unknown to most of people.
• Boaty McBoatface, the suggested name for a polar research vessel.
• Honolulu's bus service is called TheBus.
• There's a republic, in central Africa. It's called the Central African Republic. Blame the French.
• The ancient Romans combined this trope with misogyny when naming their daughters. If your family's name was Julius, your son would get three fancy names like Gaius Julius Caesar. Your daughter would only get the feminine form of the family name—"Julia". If you had more than one daughter they'd get numbers: Julia Prima, Julia Secunda..."Girl Child #1, Girl Child #2"....
  • They weren’t much better with their sons; while there sometimes was more variation, many families did the same thing with boys as with girls, keeping two of the three names and using the number for the first—e.g. Primus Julius Caesar, Secundus Julius, Tertius Julius Caesar, etc. A common custom was to name first two-three sons after their father or grandfathers, according to the family tradition, and to simply number the others. Many families maintained just two or three traditional names for their sons, which repeated generation after generation, and when they were exhausted they simply used numbers.
• Rally driver Ott Tänak used to carry along a plush duck good-luck charm whom he affectionately named, well, Duck, though he eventually parted ways with her especially after his Ford Fiesta foundered at a reservoir in 2015.
• Some countries have capital cities whose names are tautological.
  • The capital city of South Korea, Seoul, was named after an archaic Korean word that means "capital city" (the modern Korean word for "capital city" is sudo).
  • Kyoto, Japan's thousand-year-long capital, was named after an obsolete word for "capital city" (the modern Japanese word is shuto, incidentally a cognate of sudo above). However, it did become an Artifact Title when Japan moved its capital from there to Tokyo (which translates as "eastern capital").
  • From May 6, 1998 to March 23, 2019, and since September 17, 2022 the capital city of Kazakhstan is named Astana, meaning "capital city" in Kazakh.
• There are many roller coasters in the world named “Roller Coaster”.
• Pablo Picasso had several dogs throughout his life, one of which was a Dalmatian named "Perro," the Spanish word for dog.
• Johnny Ramone was so conservative that he didn't give his pets names "because animals don't have names in nature."
• The female actress Mädchen Amick, whose given name is the German word for "girl".
• Played with a little, but a decently common boy's name is Guy.
• "Christian" is a relatively common name, that originated in the Middle Ages as a name for Christians. There are even a few Christian saints with the name (like Christian of Clogher and Christian of Cologne), as well as ten different Danish monarchs. Although it isn't impossible to find atheists named Christian.
  • Or a Pagan, like Norwegian Black Metalist Varg Grishnak/Louis Cachet, whose birth name was Kristian Vikernes.
• In 1798, they split off Rockland county, NY, and they needed a new city to be the county seat. They named the new city New City.
• The neighboring Spanish islands of Mallorca and Menorca got their names from the Latin for "bigger one" and "smaller one". Because Mallorca is bigger and Menorca is smaller.
• Wikipedia has an entire article on "tautological place names". The winner may be the Mekong River, which translates into English as "river river river".
  • The place name "Torpenhow Hill" translates as "Hill-hill-hill Hill", with tor, pen and how all meaning "hill" in different languages.
  • Sahara just means "desert" in Arabic. Arabs call it as-Sahra al-Kubra, which means "The Great Desert".
• If you want to go into other languages, a man being named, "Adam" is an example, since the name translates as "A human". Though this also an example of A Kind of One, since "Adam" has also been used to refer to mankind as a whole.
• A common girl's name is Donna - which is the Italian for "woman".
  • In a similar vein, a less common girl's name is Talitha - which is ancient Aramaic for girl, derived from the Bible.
• A common boy's name in France is François, which can mean "Frenchman" (as well as "free man"). Subverted if you happen to be named "Francis", "Francisco", or "Frank" (which are the equivalents of "François" in English, Spanish, and German respectively).
• Physicist identify the binding interaction that holds protons together in an atom is the strongest force in the universe. This force is aptly named the "strong force".
• From 1976 to 1983, the Renault 5 was marketed as the Le Car in the United States and Canada.
• Among the ships Christopher Columbus took on his first trip to the Americas, is one known as "The Pinta." This simply means "the painted one," as it was brightly painted. This wasn't actually the ship's real name, but it's common nickname, although the original name has been forgotten.
• A female Southern Resident killer whale belonging to the L Pod was named "Kasatka", which is Russian for "orca".

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