I have a daughter named Alexandria (see Eratosthenes, circumference of the Earth) and a son named Isaac (see Newton, duh). My wife wouldn’t let me name him Tycho.
I named a foster cat Petri, like the RJ Petri of Petri dish fame. His new owner then changed the name to Orion after the constellation and the Cat in Meni in Black.
I had a rat named Dimitri Mendelev, and my son is named Peregrine; for the bird, not the LOTR character (I was going to do raptor medicine, lucky for him he was named before I switched to pathology).
We once brought a cat home in a box. When we carried him in, the box was very still and we weren’t sure if he’d survived the trip home. Thankfully, when we opened the box he was alive. There was only one possible name he could be given. Schroedinger.
My sons are named Gavin Orion and Kaden Triton.
“Gavin” means “white hawk” in Welsh and “Orion” is after the constellation.
“Kaden” is a variation of “kade” meaning “from the wetlands”, and “Triton” is a moon of Neptune, and also the name of several seashells (angular triton, Triton’s trumpet etc.)
And turning the sentence around, naming an animal for the purposes of (amateur) science, I have had several spiders given names to distinguish them one from another in write-ups. It’s a lot easier to mention “Chica” rather than Achearanea tepidariorum #2. So I’ve had Jacob, Fat Momma, the afore-mentioned Chica, and presently, Little Momma, Brownie, and Pops.
Three of our cats are named Newton, Einstein, and Curie. Newton was so named because as a very small kitten he discovered gravity by pushing everything in succession off the kitchen table and then falling off himself, as we watched in helpless laughter. After that, naming the rest after great physicists followed inevitably.
(Our foster daughter named the fourth cat, Penelope, and we failed to successfully retronym that with some scientific meaning.)
A series of cats include Pluteus (an echinoderm larvae with multiple “arms” for this polydactyl cat), Beroe (a genus of ctenophore), Galena (a mineral), and finally Maximus and Minimus.
My shepherd/sheltie/jackal mix is named Kepler, because Tycho Brahe treated him like a dog. Only two people have laughed at that explanation: a university maths professor, and a ten-year-old being home-schooled. Everyone else walks away, murmuring “Kibbler?”
Had one cat named Beryl (had eyes the color of the gem Beryl), my 14 year old male cat is names Pauli (for Wolfgang Pauli- and the Pauli exclusion Princliple) and he had a friend cat who did not live with us long- but because of his coloring was named Wolfram, or Wolfie.
Not quite science, but science fiction that probably only scientists will get: My cat is named Pixel, aka the Cat Who Walks Through Walls (Robert A. Heinlein).
Err, my other cat is called Jadzia (for all you Trekkies out there).
Alana, those are fantastic names for cats. (One of our neighbors had dogs named Dax and Worf. Sadly, Dax had to be put down. Worf is still going strong, though. Irony, no?)
Sadly, our beloved Omni passed a few years ago. She was named after her first meal with us: some tuna, a few grains of rice, at least 4 peas, and blueberry yogurt for dessert. A fairly well rounded meal for our furry little Omnivore cat.
My ball python is named Carl (after Carl Sagan and Karl Marx) Silex (Latin route for silicon, my favorite element) Dyson (after Freeman Dyson’s Dyson Sphere).
I really liked Medulla Oblongata, and I’ve been telling my students for nigh on a decade that’s what I would name my daughter. Alas, it was not to be… but I did get to name her after a Star Trek character ;o)
My daughter is named Freya Linnea. Linnea after Carolus Linneaus, the father of taxonomy (I’m a taxonomist…). It is also the national flower of Sweden where my wife is from, which was also described by Linneaus.
I have four mountain minnows called W+, W-, Z0 and photon. I also had a shubunkin called Tau, but he died young.
When people say the vector bosons’ names are not appropriate, I point out that they frequently occupy the same low energy state in their bowl, and so cannot be fermions. Few people argue past that.
And when I was a CS grad student at Stanford, my roommates and I named our twin black cats Spike and Surge because we decided that Pop and Push would be just too geeky.
My first daughter is named Jet after the stone. I wanted to name the 3rd one Io, after a beautiful, dynamic moon of Jupiter, but I couldn’t get the name past my market testers. Third is named Tayo Echo Onyx instead, so the gemstones match. Sing it. It sounds good in song.
If the 3rd was a boy, I wanted to name him Xenon, after the element, because I have a beautiful periodic table over my bed, and I was sick with nausea my entire pregnancy and spent hours/days/months staring at the noble gases and thinking about how stable they were. Sadly, partner-guy ixnayed that one right out of the gate. I don’t know why–it’s a really really cool name. Maybe he didn’t spend enough time staring at the periodic table. I mean, once you decide the -ium ‘s are out, there’s not much left.
The middle names of my two boys are both based on science. Our first born has the middle name of Dominik (spelling variation on the patron saint of astronomers). Our second child has the middle name of Mendel … fitting since people long wondered what our children would look since my husband and I both have recessive traits … both children were giant genetic experiments and we absolutely LOVE the results! :)
I have 2 beautiful tortishell females. The younger is Mishka, named after Alexander Mishka Frith. The older, Alpha Female, Is Rina, after Czarina Alexandra Fyodorovna of Russia. The two often engage in Russian Roulette, using the elephant and butterflies game I have(the one that shoots butterflies up, but instead I have replaced butterflies with pingpong balls, with one that has catnip in it! The unlucky cat gets a catnip bomb to the dome, and is often to intoxicated to make sense of the world around them. This is usually Mishka, named after the Raggae artist, so she enjoys a good ol’ toke of the Nip(as we call it in the 508))
SCIENCE SCOUTS 
My cat is named Ignaz Semmelweis.
I have a daughter named Alexandria (see Eratosthenes, circumference of the Earth) and a son named Isaac (see Newton, duh). My wife wouldn’t let me name him Tycho.
My dog is named Galileo
my friend Tim’s golden retriever is named Navier (after the fluid mechanicist). he so needs this badge.
i’m not sure if I get the sheep symbol. did someone name their kid Dolly?
My first two cats were Angstrom and Bunsen…I’m a chemistry dork.
I named a foster cat Petri, like the RJ Petri of Petri dish fame. His new owner then changed the name to Orion after the constellation and the Cat in Meni in Black.
My dogs name is Doppler. He has big ears.
Both of my kids are named for great explorers.
My second son is named “Phoenix” after one of the Mars landers.
My other son is named “Drake” for Sir Francis Drake.
Our cats are Strange and Charm. And neither of us is a physicist.
Well, not having any children, I cant do this yet, but I always wanted to call a daughter ‘Ethyl Ester’
My cat is named Schrodinger.
I had a rat named Dimitri Mendelev, and my son is named Peregrine; for the bird, not the LOTR character (I was going to do raptor medicine, lucky for him he was named before I switched to pathology).
My daughter is named Aurelia. This is an old synonym for a chrysalis, a genus of jellyfish, a type of flower, and Julius Cesar’s mom’s name!
My dog’s full name is Sanidine. (She’s a tan mutt who normally goes by Sandy, because Sanidine is just too pretentious.)
We once brought a cat home in a box. When we carried him in, the box was very still and we weren’t sure if he’d survived the trip home. Thankfully, when we opened the box he was alive. There was only one possible name he could be given. Schroedinger.
I named my two pet goldfish “Tigris” and “Euphrates” when I was 10.
“My wife wouldn’t let me name him Tycho.”
Damn you! I now want to get a donkey and call it Tycho Bray-er.
My sons are named Gavin Orion and Kaden Triton.
“Gavin” means “white hawk” in Welsh and “Orion” is after the constellation.
“Kaden” is a variation of “kade” meaning “from the wetlands”, and “Triton” is a moon of Neptune, and also the name of several seashells (angular triton, Triton’s trumpet etc.)
I had a cat named pi, once.
And turning the sentence around, naming an animal for the purposes of (amateur) science, I have had several spiders given names to distinguish them one from another in write-ups. It’s a lot easier to mention “Chica” rather than Achearanea tepidariorum #2. So I’ve had Jacob, Fat Momma, the afore-mentioned Chica, and presently, Little Momma, Brownie, and Pops.
The photos are on my blog. For example, Post-Coital Bliss, Sort of.
My son is named Altair.
Three of our cats are named Newton, Einstein, and Curie. Newton was so named because as a very small kitten he discovered gravity by pushing everything in succession off the kitchen table and then falling off himself, as we watched in helpless laughter. After that, naming the rest after great physicists followed inevitably.
(Our foster daughter named the fourth cat, Penelope, and we failed to successfully retronym that with some scientific meaning.)
A series of cats include Pluteus (an echinoderm larvae with multiple “arms” for this polydactyl cat), Beroe (a genus of ctenophore), Galena (a mineral), and finally Maximus and Minimus.
I have a cat named Algy – I’m a stream ecologist who studies algae. My husband named her because she has super green eyes.
My shepherd/sheltie/jackal mix is named Kepler, because Tycho Brahe treated him like a dog. Only two people have laughed at that explanation: a university maths professor, and a ten-year-old being home-schooled. Everyone else walks away, murmuring “Kibbler?”
Picture appears at profile for my blog.
My bike is named Kuroshio after the northward flowing Japan Current in oceanography
Had one cat named Beryl (had eyes the color of the gem Beryl), my 14 year old male cat is names Pauli (for Wolfgang Pauli- and the Pauli exclusion Princliple) and he had a friend cat who did not live with us long- but because of his coloring was named Wolfram, or Wolfie.
Not quite science, but science fiction that probably only scientists will get: My cat is named Pixel, aka the Cat Who Walks Through Walls (Robert A. Heinlein).
Err, my other cat is called Jadzia (for all you Trekkies out there).
My dog’s name is Democritus
Alana, those are fantastic names for cats. (One of our neighbors had dogs named Dax and Worf. Sadly, Dax had to be put down. Worf is still going strong, though. Irony, no?)
Sadly, our beloved Omni passed a few years ago. She was named after her first meal with us: some tuna, a few grains of rice, at least 4 peas, and blueberry yogurt for dessert. A fairly well rounded meal for our furry little Omnivore cat.
My son is Alexander Graham…. no “Bell”, alas, but he is Scottish, and in pre-school training to be an engineer.
I named my cat Penumbra, Penny for short.
My three dogs are named Vortman, Geshmenge and Marge; they’re all males.
I’m needed back at the home now.
My ball python is named Carl (after Carl Sagan and Karl Marx) Silex (Latin route for silicon, my favorite element) Dyson (after Freeman Dyson’s Dyson Sphere).
I convinced my sister to name her cat Positron.
I really liked Medulla Oblongata, and I’ve been telling my students for nigh on a decade that’s what I would name my daughter. Alas, it was not to be… but I did get to name her after a Star Trek character ;o)
My daughter is named Freya Linnea. Linnea after Carolus Linneaus, the father of taxonomy (I’m a taxonomist…). It is also the national flower of Sweden where my wife is from, which was also described by Linneaus.
Upon meeting my kitten I knew she had to be named MUON! fast little girl. Quatum mech rules, and I’m a biochemist
I have four mountain minnows called W+, W-, Z0 and photon. I also had a shubunkin called Tau, but he died young.
When people say the vector bosons’ names are not appropriate, I point out that they frequently occupy the same low energy state in their bowl, and so cannot be fermions. Few people argue past that.
I named my dog Mho.
I had a cat named Möbius.
I named my tiger salamander ‘Darwin’. Watching it change from a waterdog to an adult in a few days was like watching evolution in action!
I have a cat named Hyla. She LOVES frogs…..
I have a dog named Darwin (who, it turns out, was a great lover of dogs).
I had a rabbit named Ranvier, for the nodes of Ranvier in between myelenated nerve segments (saltatory conduction) . We called him Ronnie for short.
Two kitties names Watson and Crick.
I named my dog “Crab Zooea” – we called her Zoe
I had a cat named Dax, and my daughter’s cat is named Keiko.
PAGE and ELISA are normal enough names… won’t have to do a lot of explaining. but an immunologist would have a great laugh!
I have 2 hermit crabs named Watson and Crick.
We named our mini-Aussie name Photon!
My wife and I were adopted by a cat while I was a graduate student in psychology. We named him Burrhus, that’s the “B” in B. F. Skinner.
I have a friend who called her cat Pipette, and another friend who named her cat Tesla.
We named our first child Isaac, and we were really tempted to name the second one Newton…
I named my beagle Darwin.
I named one of my basset hounds Einstein.
I named my other basset hound Linus after Dr Linus Pauling.
Our younger son is named Galileo.
my doll is called Tesla. And I’ve named birds Pan, Titan and Mimas.
My mother ought to have this badge. It’s on my birth certificate!
I have a pet rock whose name is really Gneiss!
My dog is named Esker.
Our son’s middle name is Faraday.
And when I was a CS grad student at Stanford, my roommates and I named our twin black cats Spike and Surge because we decided that Pop and Push would be just too geeky.
The three kittens were going to be Newton, Einstein, and Tesla… But then Einstein fought with Tesla so much we changed his name to Edison.
My first daughter is named Jet after the stone. I wanted to name the 3rd one Io, after a beautiful, dynamic moon of Jupiter, but I couldn’t get the name past my market testers. Third is named Tayo Echo Onyx instead, so the gemstones match. Sing it. It sounds good in song.
If the 3rd was a boy, I wanted to name him Xenon, after the element, because I have a beautiful periodic table over my bed, and I was sick with nausea my entire pregnancy and spent hours/days/months staring at the noble gases and thinking about how stable they were. Sadly, partner-guy ixnayed that one right out of the gate. I don’t know why–it’s a really really cool name. Maybe he didn’t spend enough time staring at the periodic table. I mean, once you decide the -ium ‘s are out, there’s not much left.
Here is Galileo… The Weimaraner, my son!
We named our daughter Sagan – for Carl.
We named our first retired racing greyhound “Tesla” because he was incredibly intelligent, but also incredibly weird.
My cats are Erwin (obvious) and Max (after Planck).
I have two cats named Darwin and Edison.
Two cats – Tesla and Edison. Thankfully they did not quarrel as much as their human namesakes.
We never did get a dog, who would have been named Ada (after Lovelace).
I named my sons Galileo and Archimedes, after a couple of european scientists who believed in inquiry and truth.
My daughter’s name is Jocelyn Belle Beeson. (Ok, the astronomer was Jocelyn Bell. But we DID choose the name to honor her.)
My cat is named Tycho Brahe.
The middle names of my two boys are both based on science. Our first born has the middle name of Dominik (spelling variation on the patron saint of astronomers). Our second child has the middle name of Mendel … fitting since people long wondered what our children would look since my husband and I both have recessive traits … both children were giant genetic experiments and we absolutely LOVE the results! :)
I named my daughter Linnea, after Linneaus.
Oops, here’s a video to prove her existence (My daughter Linnea, named after Linneaus)
http://www.youtube.com/annethologie#p/a/u/2/d5TyWp8P4ps
I named my cat entropy, because she is the tendency of a state towards disorder
My cat is Beagle.
My pointer is named Halley. Here she is as a puppy. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ninly/4211409357/in/photostream
My two cats are Maxwell and Darwin (aka “Chuckie D”). Lots of cute photos at http://stinky-tofu.smugmug.com/
I have 2 beautiful tortishell females. The younger is Mishka, named after Alexander Mishka Frith. The older, Alpha Female, Is Rina, after Czarina Alexandra Fyodorovna of Russia. The two often engage in Russian Roulette, using the elephant and butterflies game I have(the one that shoots butterflies up, but instead I have replaced butterflies with pingpong balls, with one that has catnip in it! The unlucky cat gets a catnip bomb to the dome, and is often to intoxicated to make sense of the world around them. This is usually Mishka, named after the Raggae artist, so she enjoys a good ol’ toke of the Nip(as we call it in the 508))
Dang, I missed an opportunity. I named my tropical centipede after rock and roll instead. But I do have a nice photo.
http://stridulations.blogspot.ca/2006/01/making-plans-for-nigel.html
I named my cat Asa Grey (even though she’s female). http://www.flickr.com/photos/ksbh01/6949141301/
My daughter’s middle name is Darwin. ;)
I had a dog named Quantum.
I have another dog whose middle name is Rayleigh (after the scattering)
My dog’s name was Hydro