Coming up with a naming theme for this year’s lambs has taken longer than normal. I have had a couple ideas, but a few didn’t have enough boy names or girl names. With 34 ewes due to lamb, the list needs to be lengthy with plenty for the boys and girls. My mom and dad gave me a great book for my birthday earlier this year and it has a whole bunch of themes. As I was looking through the book, the names in one of the themes really caught my attention. Here are some examples – Ballyhoo, Moxie, Dapperling, Brouhaha, Casanova, Zesty, and Felice. Very fun 🙂 I didn’t really understand the name of the theme though. They called it ‘personality’, some of the names fit but not all. While I was at my parents’ over the weekend, I was sharing some of the names with them and my dad said ‘Esprit de corps’ and I probably had a very perplexed look on my face 😉 We then looked up the term in the dictionary and it is french for ‘group spirit’. The full definition is – a feeling of pride in belonging to a group and a sense of identification with it. So our theme this year is ‘Esprit de corps’ or Group Spirit.
As much as I like the group of names, there are a few that will not be used…Bonkers, Boomerang, and Gigolo – ha ha!
I am looking forward to the arrival of lambs and now feel a little more prepared.
Shearing is this Saturday and lambing is only 4 weeks away!
Stories from the Farm 
What a cute theme! What kind of book was that?
I do hope you will post all about the shearing and lambing!
Thanks! The book was really random when I opened it up, I laughed 🙂 It is called ‘What to Name the Cat’ by Thelma Kandel. It was written in 1983 and from the writings in the front it has been given to several people. Yes, I will be posting lots of pictures from shearing and lambing!
You might keep that Bonkers one in reserve as a nickname. And maybe Boomerang (for those sheep that end up coming back.)
I didn’t want to name one boomerang and predestin it to come back 😉 There are some pretty fun ones in the list that I will know who it belongs to as soon as the lamb is born – Ragamuffin for instance 😉
You could use as a theme, German, French, Irish, Scottish etc names.
I don’t know – I’ve known a few Jacob ram lambs over the years for whom the name Gigolo would be perfect 😉
When I bought a ram named Groucho because of his cute little mustache, I never dreamed that he would like up to another definition of Groucho. I’m a firm believer that names are important!