Basic Trope: Someone names an individual animal with the name of its kind.
- Straight:
- Alice has a cat named Cat.
- Alice's cat is named Kitty.
- Alice's cat is named Neko.
- Exaggerated:
- Planet of Steves. Every cat is named Cat.
- Alice has a cat, a dog, a bird and a fish respectively named Cat, Dog, Bird and Fish.
- Overlapping with Species Surname, the cat's full name is 'Cat Cat'.
- Alice's cat is named "Felis catus".
- Downplayed:
- The cat is named Catherine, but is usually shortened as Cat.
- A dog named Doug.
- A dog named Jack Russell.
- Justified:
- The cat used to be a stray and Alice calls her Cat because she doesn't intend to keep it, even though she frequently feeds and grooms it. When she does eventually adopt the animal, she never bothers renaming it.
- same as above but all attempts to rename Cat are refused by Cat herself as she has become too attached to that being her name.
- Alice is uncreative and couldn't think of a better name.
- Alice doesn't think an animal should have a human name.
- During Alice's time the current day word for the animal was merely a Stock Animal Name. (EG: "renard" has supplanted "goupil" as the French word for fox.)
- Alice is a young child who doesn't know how to come up with names yet.
- Inverted: Alice names her cat "Dog".
- Subverted:
- Alice tells her friends about her new pet named Cat, and everyone else expects it to be a cat. It's actually a dog.
- Everyone calls the cat "Cat" but it turns out his name is actually Mister Fluffy.
- A guinea pig is originally called Guinea Pig, but everyone thinks the name is too long, so they shorten it to Ginny.
- Turns out "Cat" was short for "Catherine".
- Double Subverted:
- But Alice also has a turtle whose name is Turtle.
- They go back to calling Ginny by her full name again.
- Parodied:
- Alice tries to call her missing pet, and every cat in the neighborhood answers her call, because everyone had named their cat "Cat".
- When Bob meets Cat the cat, Dog the dog and Bunny the bunny, they all assume "bob" is the name of his species and call all humans bobs.
- A human named "Human".
- Zig-Zagged:
- Alice's cat is named Cat, but her Dog is named Spot, while her pet hamster is called Horse, her iguana is named Iguana, and her monkey is named Joe.
- "Cat" is actually a cat/dog hybrid.
- Averted: Alice's cat is named Morris.
- Enforced: The authors changed the cat's name to Cat, because the audience forgot that the cat was a cat.
- Lampshaded: "Your cat is named Cat? Do you have no imagination?"
- Invoked: Alice deliberately names her pet according to its species so that she wouldn't forget what her pet is.
- Exploited: Scammers easily bypass the "What's the name of your pet?" online security question because everyone just name their pets according to their species.
- Defied: Alice thought of naming her cat "Cat", but eventually decides that her pet needs a proper name and calls it Morris.
- Discussed:Bob: Alice just got a new pet cat. Guess its name.
Charlie: Kitty?
Bob: Actually worse. It's literally named Cat. - Conversed: "The writers are so lazy they actually have a dog named Dog."
- Deconstructed:
- Alice not bothering to come up with a proper name for her pet shows her lack of concern towards it. The cat is aware of this and refuses to listen to its owner.
- Since all cats are named the same, it causes a lot of confusion when they are registered, and the vets aren't quite sure which Cat belongs to whom.
- Reconstructed:
- Cat learns to love its name as Alice learns to be more responsible and mindful of her pet.
- People manage to come up with a system to distinguish the multiple Cats.
- Played for Laughs: After a whole episode of trying to figure out a good name to name her new pet cat, complete with musical montages, Alice decides to name the cat Cat.
A puppy? For me? Great! I'll name him Dog. Then he'll be a A Dog Named "Dog"! Isn't that clever?
