i got two of the most adorable little creatures today for my sons' room; they are baby green tree frogs (though i'm not yet sure which kind they are). they are bright green, about the size of my thumb (but their hind legs are about 3 inches long) and when they are held they look around for a surface within 3 feet or so then they spring out of your hand and stick to whatever they touch, which promises to provide endless amusement.

can anyone suggest some clever names?? i asked the kids to do it, but they want to call them both 'froggy'. i was hoping for something a bit more imaginative, and what better group to ask than this motley crew of word lovers??

TIA
b

How about Sticky and Wicket?

I know what kids usually like:
hoppy and toad;
froggy and jumper;
jack and jill (my son's suggestion)--
sorry have to go he has to do homework.

The obvious choice is Hyla

...and how about tsuwm? And when you figure out how to pronounce it, tell me!

As to pet names, I'll have to think--how about toe'dtoad?

and how about tsuwm? And when you figure out how to pronounce it, tell me!

I was saving this for his anniversary in May, but what the heck:

"Tsuwm was, z.B.? Zum Wohl? Zum Beispiel?"

and May your days be pleasant ones.

IP

The obvious choice is Hyla

Yeah, well i've been calling the friendly one "Hyla" and the shy one "Cinerea", but the kids don't like either name (sorry, Chris! )

Rapunzel, i *love* your suggestion of Sticky and Wicket; Jackie, my kids favor your (and your son's) suggestions.

Since i didn't bother naming my third child until he was 3 days old (!), i'm not going to sweat it if these little guys have to be nameless for a few days until we find something that sticks (teehee). so keep those suggestions coming

oh, and fiberbabe, as for tsuwm, my head always pronounces it the same as the "tsu" part of tsunami, or "tsoom". (is this a YART?)

~b

You don't get to use these names unless you know what a sticky wicket is.

Hint: It generally favors the bowler.

pray, tell, Faldage! Googlizing the term results only in a few random cricket (i assume it's the game, not the critter) references, and though i suppose ICLIU with a bit more effort, i'm betting you can provide lucidity with relative ease.

Is this a YART? Oh, probably. Just never got around to looking it up, and always felt too humble in his Pooh-bah presence to ask him myself. I've always internally pronounced it as "tsoooom" also - a little more "oo" to account for the W, but.

Hysterical. Aenigma thinks "tsoooom" is supposed to be Tsunematsu.

Aenigma thinks "tsoooom" is supposed to be Tsunematsu.

Tsunematsu? What's Tsunami then?

It's got Tsunematsu and it doesn't have tsunami??? What the bleep kind of spell checker is it, anyway?

bridget96 is betting {I} can provide lucidity with relative ease.

In the words of the immortal (not to mention loquacious) Calvin Coolidge: You lose.

It's a little complicated. Perhaps one of the cricket fans, shanks or one of the Oz or Zild denizens of the board, could do it. But I could try. (Note: this will not be enough information for you to use the names in question) The wicket, as we all know, is the contraption of uprights and cross bars that the batsman is trying to protect from the ravages of the bowler. (You cricket fans will probably find this extremely amusing; a iggerunt US'n's attempts at explaining a sport that he is genetically incapable of understanding) If the bowler manages to hit the wicket and break it apart, the batsman is given out bowled. But if the wicket is sticky wouldn't it be more likely to withstand the assault by the bowler? I hear you ask. Aha! The wicket can also refer to, among other things, the area of the pitch near and between the wickets. When this area has been recently rained upon it frequently gets a tacky consistency, The ball reacts in a more lively fashion (the bowler bowls the ball so that it bounces before reaching the vicinity of the batsman) off of a sticky wicket and is harder to defend against.

[ducking out of the way of the bemused cricket afficianadoes emoticon]

BTW, when YLIU you could do much worse than print out and read The Devil's Dictionary of Cricket if you can get to it. It seems to be in some sort of end of month limbo right now, but it's worth the wait. It has, among other things, a picture of the Teletubbies and something vaguely resembling a good reason for the picture.

b96 sent me some pics of my little kinfolk, and they're already hylas, but of a different stripe from the ones I took my name from (mine are hyla arenacolor and b's are hyla regilla - although her pics were pretty fuzzy, so I'm guessing a bit).

Sticky and Wicket are great names - especially because the critters in question eat crickets, so there's a nice completeness to the names. tiny YART alert When I asked my son (at 2 years old) what to name his frogs, he opted for Humpty-Dumpty, Violin and A (his first initial).

to whom it may tsuwm:

...is pronounced "sue-em" -- and yes, it is a yart. :-Þ

[must post at least one postaday]

Cara Dea, Two names to "put into the hat" in the name the Frogs event. >"don't know which "kind" they are" < I assume they are a couple and accordingly suggest "Pierrot" and "Pierrette" as totemly evocative of their national heritage. (or Frankie and Francine?)

to whom it may tsuwm:

...is pronounced "sue-em" --

Hah! The biter bit! Lose the supererogatory consonant, fast. (yartpun)

Bridget, mareikura, you mentioned once that you enjoyed Last Chance To See. You may be interested in this passage from part of the HHG series:
"We thought," he said, "that you were meant to be telling the
Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth."
"Oh, that," said Prak. "Yeah. I was. I finished. There's not
nearly as much of it as people imagine. Some of it's pretty
funny, though."

He suddenly exploded in about three seconds of manical laughter
and stopped again. he sat there, jiggling his head and knees. He
dragged on his cigarette with a strange half-smile.

"Oh, I can't remember any of it now," said Prak. "I thought of
writing some of it down, but first I couldn't find a pencil, and
then I thought, why bother?"

"None of it?" said Arthur at last. "You can remember none of it?"

"No. Except most of the good bits were about frogs, I remember
that."

Suddenly he was hooting with laughter again and stamping his feet
on the ground.

"You would not believe some of the things about frogs," he
gasped. "Come on let's go and find ourselves a frog. Boy, will I
ever see them in a new light!" He leapt to his feet and did a
tiny little dance. Then he stopped and took a long drag at his
cigarette.

"Let's find a frog I can laugh at," he said simply.

The above came to me as a result of musing on Tweedledum and Tweedledee as possible names for the frogs in question. Thinking of Carroll led to thinking of Adams, hence the passage above. Two interesting characters from The Guide whose names have a nice childish ring when abbreviated are Slarti and Zarni, FWIW.

dear max,

dare i ask what "mareikura" means? and thank you for the delightful preview of the HHG; it arrived in my Amazon order yesterday as part of "The Complete Hitchhikers Guide", along with Ex Libris (thanks, D), Professor and the Madman (thanks Geoff, Anna), Bringing Out the Dead (thanks, sue-em), Guns Germs and Steel (thanks, PMB), and Annals of the Former World.

as for the names, the jury is still out. AAMOF, just yesterday i had to gently break the news to them that they are not Hyla Regilla (Pacific Tree Frogs) as they had been led to believe, but rather Hyla Cinerea (Green Tree Frogs). i'll let that sink in awhile before the final name assigments are issued.

Green Tree Frogs

So how about Spartacus and Martyrcus

(whaddus it madder so long as a frog loves his, ah, tree?

Sticky and Postit -- like the sticky backed little notes?
(I can her those groans!!!)
wow

dare i ask what "mareikura" means?

Of course you may, goddess.

Ahhhh~ now i see it. when atomica came up empty, i didn't search any further.

it's a good thing you didn't typo it to "marakihau", though i daresay it'd be a more fitting description of me

Thank you! You have taught me a new Maori word today, and reinforced the differences still extant in regional versions of Maori. I could not find "marakihau" in any of my usual online Maori dictionaries, and when I rang some friends for whom Maori is their first language, they had never heard the word either. Then I google it, and all was revealed. I can't picture you as a sea monster/god, but my friends were delighted and surprised to learn a new word. I shall have to print a picture of a "marakihau" and find out what it would be called in the Maori that they speak. Nga whakawhetai kia koe, mareikura.
(I offer thanks and praise to you, goddess)

http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/maxq/Jo's_Hints.htm

Escaped from the doldrums of March Aunt Fanny's Devil's Dictionary of Cricket is alive and well (Hi E) and back in business.

http://home.sprynet.com/~hotoff/crickgl.htm

For the picture of the Teletubbies see http://home.sprynet.com/~hotoff/crickgl.htm#battingshot

Everything I know about cricket I learned from reading Aunt Fanny in conjunction with the Don's Farewell to Cricket

How about pet names for people?
I've already told you about Tree Toad
and Sugar Beet goes without saying
Pookie, Poopie (though I've never used 'em)

What about y'all?

Escaped from the doldrums of March Aunt Fanny's Devil's Dictionary of Cricket is alive and well (Hi E) and back in business.

Well off-topic.

Most Americans I know who've come to NZ (and presumably this also would hold good for any that went to Oz, Britain, South Africa, the West Indies, India, Pakistan or Sri Lanka)find cricket to be totally inexplicable. Most dismiss it as a cultural quirk and immediately start complaining that baseball, NBA or NFL isn't shown at all, never mind live, on NZ TV. And most never seem to get over it. They get cable TV ASAP and live on ESPN.

Yet ... yet ... an American lecturer from Louisiana and another from Idaho (where? I hear you ask) started work at Otago University when I was working there. Like all the others, they initially carped bitterly about the lack of "real sport" in NZ - just that "rugby and cricket crap".

A few of us from the department were going to a one-day international between NZ and Oz and kidded these guys into coming along. Lying on the embankment in the sun drinking beer and eating hotdogs and sandwiches ain't so bad, and it mellowed one of them, in particular (the Louisianan) towards cricket. Going from "Why doesn't the bowler just throw the ball at the those sticks?" to challenging umpires' decisions "Ah, c'mon, he didn't touch the f***ing ball with the bat, how can he be out?" followed by a condensed and intense tutorial on LBW took about four hours.

Before you knew it, he was playing in the evening competition for a scratch team of University staff (no real competition, just fun, beer and wickets) and he developed into a reasonable slow/medium pace bowler. His scorn at the width of the cricket bat in comparison with a baseball bat just melted away when he was faced with 100kph deliveries from one or other of the many Otago reps who played for fun.

Last I heard he was the secretary of the University Cricket Club ...

Still, I find the notion of US cricket to be as much of an oxymoron as NZ baseball!

and recently the news reader on Channel 4 TV in UK announced that an English batsman "had been given out Leg Over" in Pakistan (I think) rather than using the more normal phrase "Leg Before". She was the teased for the rest of the news by her colleagues.
Rod