What’s in a Name? When it comes to dog breeds, plenty!

People get weird about names — and dog names are no different.

If you want to get a Siberian Husky fancier’s panties in a twist, call their dog a Husky. (They hate the connotation of bulkiness or heaviness in what is the swiftest of the sled dogs.) Conversely, American English Coonhound owners never call their dogs that — they’re just “English dogs” to those in the know.

Why should fanciers get so exorcised over simple semantics? Well, because words have power, and what we choose to call ourselves — or, more to the point, what we allow others to call us — reflects our identity.

Molossers also have their fair share of triggers and pet peeves.

Chief among them is referring to the “English Mastiff” when the official breed name — in every single standard the world over — is simply “Mastiff.”

The confusion is understandable: The first Mastiff club on the planet, which still exists today, is the Old English Mastiff Club in the United Kingdom.

But the breed name is just that one word: Mastiff.

It's all fun and games until someone says "English" Mastiff.

There’s a similar situation with the Deerhound, whose official Kennel Club name omits the word “Scottish.” (Even though Deerhound fanciers in Scotland have periodically lobbied— to no avail — for it to be added.) But the Irish Wolfhound is officially called just that. So much for consistency.

Perhaps the insistence on not adding a geography-defining adjective to the breed we call the Mastiff is an effort by the English to establish its primacy. After all, if it is simply the Mastiff, the implication is that it is the first of its kind. While no one wants to undermine the importance of this majestic breed, we know that isn’t true: Mastiff types likely originated in the Near East ((https://www.modernmolosser.com/big-dogs-of-babylonia-in-ancient-near-eas...)), and spread westward.

Breeds with non-English names can understandably pose semantic problems as well.

When such a breed name is accepted by the American Kennel Club, its plural form in that official language is also used. So, for example, multiple dogs of the Komondor breed are referred to as Komondork, just as they would be in Hungarian.

This also applies to the Italian breeds, like the Cirneco dell’Etna, which is Cirnechi dell’Etna in plural. And the Dogue de Bordeaux, which in French is pluralized as Dogues de Bordeaux.

But there was a little drama recently when some dog sites, like Infodog, started listing the Cane Corso breed as Cani Corso: Some fanciers objected to the fact that it had been pluralized; still others complained that the word Corso wasn’t conjugated in the plural form, like so: Cani Corsi.

For the record, the correct plural form is indeed Cani Corso. Anyway, moot point, since the name has been changed back to the singular everywhere I’ve looked.

But there are still people pronouncing the word “Cane” like the second word in “candy cane.” It’s not pronounced “cain.” It’s “kah-nay.”

"Cain" or "Ka-nay"? Wait for it, wait for it ... 

Slightly less irritating but still a needed area of education is how to spell “Neapolitan” in Neapolitan Mastiff. True, the word “Neo” is commonly used as shorthand for the breed, but when writing out the full word, it’s Neapolitan, with an “a” as the third letter, not an “o.” Neopolitan is just plain wrong.

With Molosser breeds that retain their non-English names, some English-speaking fanciers like to refer to themselves in that mother tongue. So Neo fanciers in the know like to call themselves mastinari; Dogo Argentino lovers similarly refer to themselves as dogueros.

Maybe we need a term for Molosser lovers. Molosseristas, anyone?