We call both our robot vacuums Eufy (they are twins we don’t even attempt to tell apart). Eufy happens to be their brand, so we clearly lack any imagination in the naming department. But we refer to them with deep love and affection and speak to/about them as though they are fully human.
On second thought, perhaps we treat them more like pets? Good boy, Eufy. Look at you being smart enough to make your way home when your battery ran out!!! Or. Bad, Eufy. How did you get yourself stuck under the refrigerator? AGAIN?
Yes we talk out loud to our robot vacuums, and I have a feeling we’re not alone.
Kyria has Bob (he’s a bike), Stephany has Ruby (she’s a car), and Nicole has Salvadore (he’s a gnome).
What about you? Do you anthropomorphize any objects in your life? Is anyone out there naming plants or furniture or purses? Do tell!
Header photo by Valeria Reverdo on Unsplash
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mbmom11
We’ve named one son’s cell phone Puck. And the other one has Turtle. Otherwise, with cars, we use their color as their name- Purple car, Gray car, etc. I have a hard enough time keeping my kids names straight, so adding more names would wear me out.
Elisabeth
Cell phones! That’s a first. I’m curious about the how and why. Puck and Turtle are hilarious and endearing.
We now have a car and an SUV, so I will just say: the car or the SUV. My husband sometimes calls the SUV “the truck” which I still get confused about!
mbmom11
Puck is the name of a black, comic cat (BCN , anyone?) , and the cell phone was black. I just wanted an alias in my contacts as initially, multiple boys would use that phone. Turtle – my son is a retiring young man, and he likes to stay home- and so that’s what we christened his phone in my contacts.
Elisabeth
Ahhh.
It is so sweet that turtle describes your son. It sounds so endearing.
coco
oh Bob is the bike!!! hhahahaha… mystery revealed.
we name our stuff toys at home but great idea to name other things too. So fun.
Elisabeth
Sorry for the confusion on the original post 😉 I did not make it very obvious about Bob’s identity, did I…
Jenny
You know it’s funny- we had names for our old cars but not the new ones. I can’t think of any objects we have names for right now, but I think if I had a robo vacuum I would definitely have a name for it. My friend has a robo vacuum she calls “Rosie” (the robot from the “Jetsons,” ha ha.)
Elisabeth
I will admit I wish we had been a bit more creative when naming out robot vacuum. I didn’t think we’d talk to it as much as we do 😉
Rosie. What a cute name for a household appliance.
Karen A.
When we moved out of one of our prior (owned) homes, we took with us the really old fridge that came with the house. The previous owners hadn’t updated anything in that house, and that included the appliances. This fridge was 20 years old then, and I guess it’s going on 40 now. No ice maker, but man does it keep things cold. Sometimes freezes things. She is a tough old bird and a long time ago I named her Bessie. We got a smaller, newer fridge to keep in the garage then, and I named that one Bob, because they reminded me of an old farm couple, the comedy kind where the wife is bigger and bossier than the husband.
When we moved to our current rental house, there was already a working stainless steel fridge here, a very nice one with a drawer freezer, and it beeps when it’s been left ajar too long. We started calling it RoboFridge.
After the kids watched Twin Peaks, and saw the bad guy named Bob, they said we had to rename our second fridge, so he is called Rob now. Rob lives in the laundry room and holds extra food, and Bessie lives out in the garage as a drink fridge. She is still chugging along!
Our toaster oven is called Mini-Max. Long story.
Elisabeth
Bessie and Bob. I LOVE THIS Karen.
So my husband actually regularly calls old things Bessie or Steve (nothing specific, but it’s his blanket term!).
Mini-Max…sounds like an interesting story 😉
Kyria @ Travel Spot
We name everything! Little L named my helmet “Corn Nut,” my parents have cars named Ruby, Grandma Lee and Sage. My car was the Red Rocket (named by my work hubby; I would have been a little more creative!) My brother had a silver Prius named the Silver Bullet and his GF has a black truck I tried to name Black Beauty but she was not having it. I named my friend’s van Yertle. AND we have trail names for everyone (this is very common when you do long distance hiking). I am Prepper, my buddy is Bugsy, my brother is TBG and my Dad is Little Sierra Cup. 🙂 We also have always called my Mom Moogle because before Google, we would call her for answers. She has renamed herself Moogus, which is also the word for Mother in Ferengi (Star Trek)!
Elisabeth
Okay, this comment is going to be very hard to beat. You are serious about names!
Grandma Lee for a car is hilarious. Trail names are so interesting; I always enjoy them when I read something about hikes like the Appalachian Trail. Prepper seems very fitting. Did you choose that, or is it assigned?
Moogus! We do have a variety of outlandish nicknames for the kids. I can’t think of any for my parents/siblings or in-laws though, so it’s very cute your family has this tradition.
Tobia | craftaliciousme
I’ve got Axel – my robo who can vacuum and mob the floors.
I may have caught talking to Axel – admittedly more annoyed than thankful.
Elisabeth
Axel! Interesting choice, but very cute. It sounds like a very “robot-y” name!
ccr in MA
Ah, well, we call our ice maker Fred (don’t know where that came from), and I had a plant once that I named Seymour. My car when I was a teenager was called The Boat, but that’s because it was huge: it was a ’69 Caddy and 18 feet long–yes, I measured it!
Elisabeth
Wow – that’s one big vehicle.
Fred the ice maker. Adorable. And Seymour?! I need to start naming my plants, though I’d be hard pressed to come up with anything as awesome as Seymour.
Jessica
We call any navigation system whether it’s on our phone or in our vehicle Mable. I’m not sure why. We find ourselves saying, “Thank you Mable.” or “Where are you taking us Mable?” We also named our camper Jenny and our truck Berta. We do a lot of camping road trips so maybe the three go hand in hand with having names.
Elisabeth
Jessica, these are all amazing.
Whenever we see an old couple walking by we’ll often immediately label the female Ethel or Gertie. A man would likely be Gerald or Frank.
NGS
The cars are named Agnes and Hedwig. My computer is named Snowball. My Kindle is Prim (I don’t remember why). I used to have a houseplant named Lindsey, but it died a long time ago and I’ve learned my lesson about naming plants!
Elisabeth
Ohhh. I love that you named your Kindle and this is very on-brand for Engie.
Agnes. I’ve only known one (human) Agnes in my life. Now I know a car by the same name 😉
Central Calif Artist Jana
My car is Fernando. I thought it was a female and mentally called it Fern, but after driving it for several years, I realized it is male. (’96 Honda Accord 5-speed coupe, 253,000 miles, GO FERNANDO, GO!!)
Elisabeth
Fernando! This is brilliant. (I have to admit – to me at least – Fernando sounds much more fitting for a vehicle than Fern anyway!)
Also, wowzers on the mileage. That’s over 400,000 km for us here in Canada.
Steve
Naming and interacting with inanimate objects seems perfectly normal to me. If you can’t be friends with the robots that live in your home, they’ll just get sad and you don’t want that.
Elisabeth
Normal, perhaps. Fun…definitely! I feel like my family is underutilizing this opportunity for whimsy.
Flavia
I’m an inveterate anthropomorphizer! My beloved cross-country bike was Guffy, named after a pony I met in Arizona… when Guffy was stolen, I got Pinky (grey bike with pink handlebar tape)… our beloved clivia is Plant, an orchid salvaged from a dumpster in San Francisc is named Oscar, another (slightly larger) orchid Tully… our rechargeable candle Timey Tim… the list is joyful and endless! 🙂
Elisabeth
Guffy! How cute. Though very sad he/she was stolen.
And you salvaged an orchid from a dumpster? And called it Oscar!
That really is a very joyful list!!
Stephany
The only thing I’ve named is my car! But I do talk to Ruby like she’s a real person. Like the first time I got in the car and saw bird poop on the windshield, I said, “Oh no, Ruby. It’s your first bird poop. That’s okay. We can wash it right off!” Am I going crazy? Perhaps.
Elisabeth
I think it is endearing and very sweet. I think in addition to anthropomorphizing, we also tend to infantilize objects like this, too? Perhaps it’s this subconscious desire to nurture? Plants, cars, bikes…we want to take care of them, so I think it’s natural to treat them with the kindness and respect we would (hopefully) treat other humans with…?
Gigi
I love people who name random things; so creative. I don’t have that gene unfortunately. And speaking of robot vacuums – mine just died. I turned it on the other day (and again today) and it stays in one spot and spins in circles. *sigh*
Maybe when I buy a new one, I’ll get creative and give it a name.
Elisabeth
Oh no. The dreaded spiral of death. I’ve lost track of how long we’ve had Eufy. Two years now? I think? So far so good.
I hope you come up with a name for a new robovac (perhaps a bit more creative than “Eufy” which was the best we could manage).
Ernie
Back when we had a GPS device in our car, the kids named her Destiny. I think? But now I’m wondering if I’m getting that confused with when we first had Bluetooth and maps spoke to us, and they called that Destiny, because it would say things like What’s your destination? I call my big white 12 seater van GW for Great White, but IRL we call it WHITE. Growing up we drove a 1976 Chevy Impala station wagon that lived well past its prime. My mom called that Ole Betsy.
Elisabeth
Destiny. That sounds very fitting for a GPS! I know some people name their Siri (and of course Alexa is a household name).
Ole Betsy sounds perfect for an old station wagon. And Great White seems like the obvious choice for a 12-seater van. Wow – that’s a lot of seats! I can’t imagine navigating that in a parking lot. Gold stars to you.
J
We name our cars, but nothing else. Our cars are Fancy (Camry) and Boomer (Scion XB). We had a Volvo named Achebe, because I read a book, Things Fall Apart, that really struck me in grad school, and the author’s last name was Achebe. My phone is named Checkers, because I had a plaid phone case for a while and it made me laugh to think of Richard Nixon’s Checker’s Speech. (I’m using Kyria’s link tips…I know a TINY bit of HTML, but didn’t know you could use it in a comment.)
Elisabeth
Look at the fancy HTML. Kyria’s posts are both interesting and super helpful so far this NaBloPoMo and I’m loving all the things I’m learning from the commentors on those posts as well.
Checkers the Phone…cute! Before this post, I had never heard of people naming their phones, but it feels like something straight out of an adorable kids picture book. Checkers the Phone would make a delightful character, traveling the world making calls and taking pictures <3
Meike
I don’t have a name for anything at home but at my previous lab we had a name for our mass spectrometers and the microscopes at work have all names.
Elisabeth
Love this!!! I used to use a mass spec a lot and, sadly, never once thought about giving it a name. Alas, I am not very creative in the naming department…
PamDDO
I call my robot vacuum Roomeo, and my (late) floor washing robot Floorenzo.
Elisabeth
*Mic drop*
These are perfect and so witty.
Maria
Our robot vacuum is known as “Roombica” giving a Romanian diminutive spin on its brand name. Roombica is a much loved member of the family and when he has gone out of commission twice we’ve missed that little robotic guy quite a lot.
Other than Roombica we don’t really have any named inanimate objects. Haven’t named any of the vehicles we’ve owned. Or any applicances.
Elisabeth
I’m with you! Losing one of our Eufys would be tragic. I rely on them to keep my floors at least quasi-presentable.
San
We do name objects! Haha. We have a basil plant (Neal), a deco owl (Rupert) and our new car’s name is Pearl 🙂
Elisabeth
A basil plant named Neal! Love it, San!
Suz
I used to have a name for my Dyson vacuum, but when she had to retire, I stopped naming objects.
My dear friend D’Anne and her family all named their cars with Car in the name: Carson. Carlos. Carmon. When she was visiting, she started calling my car Cardashian and I said NO WAY JOSE! 🤣
Elisabeth
Okay, that is brilliant to name vehicles with names that start with “Car” – love it and have never heard of anything like it.