http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ADogNamedDog

Beetle, Kubo and the Two Strings "If you're Monkey and I'm Beetle, why isn't he called Boy?"

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Some completely uncreative owner has decided the family pet will be known as Dog. Or, perhaps, a similarly uncreative author names their feline character Kitty. Alternately, the creature in question does have a less Shaped Like Itself name, but for whatever reason, Alice the Pig prefers to go as Piggy. Usually but not always applied to animals; robots imaginatively named Robot and the like are part of this trope, too. Remarkably common in children's shows, despite the obvious problems it should theoretically cause.

One might show a touch more flair by naming something what it is in a foreign language, like a lion named Leo. A common subversion is to name something it's not, e.g. a dog named Platypus.

A subtrope of Shaped Like Itself. Pokémon Speak is a closely-related trope where something's named for the sound it makes. Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep" is another closely-related trope where a character is only known by their job title. Race Name Basis is when someone thinks every dog is named "Dog". See also Species Surname ("Dog Smith" is A Dog Named "Dog", "Bob T. Dog" is Species Surname), Namedar, A Lizard Named "Liz", and A Pig Named "Porkchop". If the cast is full of these, it's Animal Theme Naming. If a character's species is named after the character's name, it's A Kind of One.

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Note that robots also have their own trope. This trope name itself uses A Noun Referred to as X.

Example Subpages:

Other Examples:

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Advertising

Many of the lesser McDonaldland characters have names like this. The policeman whose giant head is made out of a Big Mac is named Big Mac, the bird is named Birdie, the orange juice tree is named the Orange Juice Tree, etc..

One animated advertising campaign for Taco Bell featured the characters Nacho (a cat) and Dog (a dog), invoking and averting this trope at the same time.

Peko-chan and Poko-chan, the mascots of Japanese candy company Fujiya, have a dog named Dog. Of course, it is a Japanese company and Dog's name is in English, so it probably sounds cool and exotic.

One of the KCL Productions' Nintendo Commercials is a Kirby: Canvas Curse promo with Kirby and a giant finger. The finger is just called "Finger" by the company.

Gamestop and EB Games have a mascot named "Buck Wild", better known as "Buck the Bunny". A "buck" is what male rabbit is called, but it's also likely a Punny Name based around money.

The Playhouse Disney mascot Clay is a talking blob of clay.

The mascot of Mug Root Beer is a bulldog named "Dog".

Messin' with Sasquatch: A sasquatch named Sasquatch is the mascot.

Asian Animation

The Pakdam Pakdai movie Ocean Attack featured a yeti as a character. The yeti's name is simply Yeti.

Simple Samosa: The main character is a samosa named Samosa. The other characters are examples of this as well; guess what foods Jalebi, Dhokla, and Vada are.

The main character of 3000 Whys of Blue Cat is a blue cat named Blue Cat.

Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: In the English dubs, the wolf serving as the show's villain is named Wolffy. In the original Chinese version and a few other dubs, the other characters are also named after their species (Pleasant Goat, Lazy Goat, etc.). Paddi owns a pet egg named Eggy.

Happy Heroes: Huo Haha owns a pet owl named Mau, whose name is a shortened form of "maotouying", the Chinese word for "owl".

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Comic Books

The undead dog from The Amazing Screw-On Head is called... wait for it... Mr. Dog.

Miyamoto Usagi of Usagi Yojimbo. This name is in Japanese order: "Usagi" (Japanese for "rabbit") is the given name. It also works as a Punny Name due to "usagi" having the same vowel placement as "Musashi".

Usagi of Usagi Yojimbo. This name is in Japanese order: "Usagi" (Japanese for "rabbit") is the given name. In the graphic novel Jonah Hex: No Way back, Jonah adopts a dog (or, rather, he allows it to follow him around and feeds it occasionally), that he names 'Dawg'.

Owly: The eponymous character is an owl. His best friend is a worm named Wormy. However, his other friend, Scampy the chipmunk, averts this trope.

The character Vargen in Bamse is a wolf who was originally the main antagonist and eventually became the de-facto fourth ranger to the Power Trio of the comic. His name is Swedish for "the wolf", and while it might seem like a case of Species Surname for the first name, it is closer to this trope: he was orphaned at a very young age, and his rather abusive step-parents never bothered to actually name him, only calling him "little wolf".

Jane Foster: Valkyrie: In the third issue, Jane gets a talking horse as part of her new job, who states his name is "Horse" ("Mister Horse" if Jane's feeling formal).

Comic Strips

Eastern Animation

The bear from Masha and The Bear is named "The Bear".

The Polish stop-motion children's series Miś Uszatek, about a kindergartener bear and his friends. Nearly everyone is named simply "Hare", "Piglet", etc. Lampshaded in one of the episodes, where Hare mentions that most other hares have more imaginative names (though they're all puns on something hare-related.)

Fan Works

Music

Once there was a band. They were called The Band.

Peter, Paul, and Mary put out an album called Album.

Inverted in the children's song "I've Got a Dog and my Dog's Name is Cat" by Barry Louis Polisar. (His cat's named Dog, too, and his bird and fish are respectively Fish and Bird.)

Metallica is a borderline example, metallica being the Latin phrase for "of metal" (the name was to go for a fanzine of a friend of Lars Ulrich's way back in 1981, but he repurposed it for the band).

They Might Be Giants Doctor Worm is about a worm who goes by that name, who plays drums. In the song, he sings that he's not a real doctor, but he is a real worm. Played with in Walking My Cat Named Dog , a cover of a folk-rock song by Norma Tanega.

The British band Fire has a song called "Father's Name was Dad."

The White Stripes song "The Hardest Button to Button" have lyrics that mention the birth of a baby boy that is named "Baby".

Played with, in several various ways, in the song "The Name Of My Frog" by Bryant Oden: I have a bunny named Bunny and a rat named Rat

A bird named Bird and a cat named Cat

A ferret named Ferret and a dog named Dog

So you can probably guess the name of my frog:

Francis Felix Fenton Fabian

Finley Farnsworth Falco Fallon

Flannigan Fairfax Freddy McGrog

Farley Fernando the Frog It gets even sillier later.

Pro Wrestling

Tree the tree, companion of Gateway Championship Wrestling and St. Louis Anarchy's Johnny Greenpeace, which was of course a potted tree.

Puppet Shows

Tabletop Games

In the Dungeons & Dragons Dark Sun supplement the Thri-Kreen of Athas, thri-kreen legends include a human woman named "Drasna". Drasna is the Kreen word for female human, presumably because they forgot her name over the centuries.

Toys

Fisher-Price names the puppy in their Laugh and Learn line... Puppy. The monkey is named Monkey, the frog is named Froggy, the duck is named Ducky, and puppy's sister? Sis. And these are only the organic examples, the franchise also runs with this trope with inorganic objects department like Cookie Jar, Soccer Ball and Mail Box. Granted that the line is targeted at infants, but it gives you the perception that they're shaping up children to name their pets using this trope.

GoGo's Crazy Bones has a few examples of this, such as Eggy, a Gogo who is, well, an egg.

V-Tech also does this to some extent. The blue dog's name is Puppy as well.

Visual Novels

In Silver Crisis, Lucario goes by the name of his own species, confusing Lucas on why he would call himself that. Its later revealed that the reason for this is because Lucario wanted to isolate himself from others after losing faith in humanity when he was betrayed by his former trainer that he dedicated his life to, the one who gave him his actual name, Laiyu.

In Ikemen Sengoku, Mitsunari named his pet cat "Kitty" because of his forgetfulness about names.

Drakan the half-dragon from Sable's Grimoire. It turns out that her real name is Naziel.

Web Animation

Web Original

In The Intercontinental Union of Disgusting Characters, Ringman's warhorse is named Warhorse. (And the only city with a name in all of Central Earth is named Town.)

Bunny is well, a bunny, but if one read between the lines of some of the stories that feature her, her real name could be and mostly likely is Ethelinda Berniece Rabbitwright. Another subversion like the Linkara example being that "Bunny" is a nickname. Confirmed here that her real name is Ethelinda Berniece.

Web Videos