Tim and Allison Moyer of Ingram, Texas, care for lots of feral cats in their neighborhood, and refer to them by various names. Often they eventually shorten those names to just initial letters. For example, Calico Kitty becomes simply CK. Is there a word for such shortenings besides initialism? The Moyers like to call them acronames. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Acronames”
We heard from Tim Moyer who lives in Ingram in Central Texas and he says it’s an area with a lot of feral cats. and He and his wife Allison try to treat them responsibly, you know, catching and neutering and and making sure that they’re healthy there. and He says most of these cats we eventually name, Calico Kitty and White-Faced Kitty, become CK and WFK. And we refer to these as acronames.
But he’s wondering if there really is a word acroname or did they just make that up? And as far as I know, Grant, there’s no term acroname, but I like it. We have a dog who was originally Little Dog and now she’s LD. And it turns out that we have friends who have a dog who’s also LD, but she’s Lucky Dog.
Acroname, though, is so close to acronym, and NIM, of course, means name, right?
Right, right.
So it’s very close to the word itself.
I like it.
I mean, I guess it’s an initialism, but I do like acronym, and it makes me think about how we’ve talked on the show before about how funny it is that pets seem to acquire not just one but several names as time goes on.
Yes.
We’ve developed a whole new slew of names for our cats, even since we last spoke about this. Bianca is now sometimes called Bonkers.
Why is that, Grant?
Just because it’s a funny name.
She’s actually very sweet and gentle.
It’s the other cat who’s the wild one.
Bonkers.
