Shakespeare Cat Names: Tybalt, Puck & a Character for Every Cat
Shakespeare gave us the most cat-coded name in literature: Tybalt, the "Prince of Cats" from Romeo and Juliet, a name borrowed from the cat Tibert in the medieval fable Reynard the Fox. This guide draws cat names from across the canon, sorted the way the First Folio sorts itself. The great tragedies offer weighty picks like Hamlet, Ophelia, Macbeth, Othello and Cordelia. The comedies and the fairy wood of A Midsummer Night's Dream supply Puck, Titania, Oberon, Viola and Beatrice. The romances yield Ariel, Miranda and Perdita from The Tempest and its sister plays. The histories add swaggering names like Falstaff — the knight "as vigilant as a cat to steal cream" — along with Hal and Henry, and Stratford-upon-Avon gives William, Sonnet and Stratford itself. A coat-match section pairs Bianca (Italian for "white") with white cats and Othello with black ones, plus bonded pairs like Romeo and Juliet and Titania and Oberon for naming two cats at once.
