> how did you come up with your name? Did you get your first choice?
With difficulty!
I had one name in mind which I really wanted but apparently it was already taken, and even varying the spelling by several letters wasn't acceptable. It took me over a year to find something I felt equally happy with, after thinking about it on almost a daily basis (read: driving me nuts).
My decision came when someone posted on here about the trend for prefixes being less "traditional" names these days (main reason for that being the extreme difficulty in finding something not already taken!). And that reminded me of a word with a great deal of meaning for my family, the name of a house we lived in when I was a child, taken from a nearby field name which dates back to the 13th century, and more or less unique.
Mine was also in the January edition, the first online one, and I still haven't told many people just in case!
PS: I do envy some of the breeders overseas who can register kennel names of more than one word - some of them are very imaginative, especially the French ones which are used as an affix after the dog's name. Might be a nightmare for show secretaries, but "Of the Fields of Burnished Gold" or suchlike is very pretty.