Alexander Loeb has a collection of 10 pets along with a few fish. One pet named Jewel is an iguana more than 2 feet long.

A hairless rat named Cinderella is among Alexander Loeb’s pets.

Alexander Loeb has a collection of 10 pets along with a few fish. He is holding an albino leopard gecko named Phantom. Behind him is his black lab mix, Poe.

For many people, it’s tough to come up with a name for a pet; for others, it’s effortless.

Pet names can come from the Internet, family members, songs, movies or names that people make up. Some pets already come with names, even though the owners may change them. Certain names are chosen for pets because of the animal’s traits.

This was the case for Hannah Markley, a freshman at West Junior High School. One of her cats, Rascal, was named for how crazy he is. Some of these crazy things include sleeping in the bathtub and drinking out of the toilet. At other times, he goes wild, ripping up the carpet, running around and walking sideways on the wall behind their couch.

Alex Hill, also a freshman at West, has two pets. Her dog, Oliver, went through many other names before becoming Oliver. Finally, Alex and her family looked up top dog names on the Internet and saw Oliver, and they agreed it was the name for him.

Her cat is named Max-a-Million Sebastian Kitty Cat Hill. This name has various pieces to it: First is Max, because if Alex were a boy, her name would have been Max. Sebastian is a random name that a family member added. The family decided upon Kitty Cat Hill because he is a kitty cat and Hill is the family’s last name.

Then there is Blondie, the former dog of Rosemary Black, West eighth-grader. Rosemary’s sister named the golden retriever yellow Lab mix.

“I was taking her for a walk, and she saw a male dog and chased after him,” Rosemary says. “I was on rollerblades, so she took me with her.”

The name Blondie was a good fit — she had blond hair and was energetic.

Alexander Loeb, sixth-grader at Raintree Montessori School, has multiple pets. Two are geckos named Phantom and Noodles. Because Phantom is albino, it reminded Alexander of ghosts. He named the other gecko Noodles because he liked the name. Alexander also named one of his family’s fish Fredrick.

“He looked like a Fredrick, and he had freckles,” Alexander says.

And last but not least is Poe, the family dog. Alexander’s mother named her Poe because she likes the poet Edgar Allan Poe.