Somali Cat Names, Names For Somali Kittens, Page 5

The Somali is the longhaired Abyssinian, and its name carries the same geographic puzzle as its parent breed. New Jersey breeder Evelyn Mague chose "Somali" because Somalia borders Ethiopia — once known as Abyssinia — preserving the East African chain. Modern genetic research, applied equally to both breeds, traces actual ancestry not to East Africa but to coastal populations around the Bay of Bengal in India and Southeast Asia. The name honors the show-import country; the DNA points elsewhere.

The breed almost didn't survive long enough to be named. After WWII, barely a dozen Abyssinians remained in the breeding population. The longhair allele, recessive in Abys, likely entered through this bottleneck and surfaced when breeders rebuilt the gene pool. Mague's longhaired kitten George, born in the mid-1960s, is one of the first documented examples. The CFA registered the Somali in 1976 and granted Championship status in 1979; the GCCF followed with Championship in 1998 after the first UK imports in 1980.

The defining coat is the ticked agouti pattern stretched into longer fur. Each hair carries multiple alternating bands of color, producing iridescence in sunlight, and the breed's plumed tail and full ruff have earned the nickname "fox cat." Standard colors are ruddy, cinnamon, blue, and fawn. Temperament reads as "busy, active, agenda-driven and affectionate" (CFA) — TICA goes further and calls Somalis "preposition cats" because they explore above, below, in, under, across, beside, between, into, over, and through.

Which naming tradition do you want to honor — the breed's East African name (Selam, Asmara, Dawit, Solomon), its actual genetic origin (Asha, Indra, Maya), or the foxlike ticked coat (Vixen, Russet, Copper)?