I have read books where pets have literary names but I am rather inclined to unimaginative names for my pets, often based after their colour, Blackie the cat, Tandy the dog etc.
My children took over so we had Yeti the Himalayan cat and Chula the Siamese after Prince Chulalongkorn in "The King and I" He would be a kind of literary one, I suppose, from the original book.

I have two terriers. The first, a Yorkshire terrier is named Sospan, a Welsh word meaning saucepan and derived from a song the rugby fans of my wife's favourite team have adopted as their anthem.
The second, a West Highland Terrier, is called Scarlet. It may be thought that this came from the main character in Gone With the Wind, but my wife's team are the Llanelli Scarlets, so it is a sporting rather than literary derivation.

Bill

Rosefolly .......
A Rat Terrier !!
Can you post a photo?
My son got one several years ago and she is a hoot.
Not cuddly as you might imagine, more like trying to hug a sack of door knobs!
But she is dilligent in being true to her genes.
She will hunt down and devour anything that cannot outrun her.....and she is literally a blur when she is a top speed !
A dog of amazing spirit and energy.

I have a cat named Waldo. For those of you who are familiar with the Where's Waldo picture books, (although he wasn't really named for him) my Waldo used to live up to his name; he was a genius at disappearing. We were forever asking "Where's Waldo?"

And now that I remember, I had a cat I named after a character in a Tarzan book when I was a child...does that count? LOL

I named my Sheltie Blithe Spirit. Unfortunately everyone thinks he's a she when they hear the name. He IS a blithe spirit.

I once named a cat Jennyanydots after a cat in T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. That was before I found out what an unpleasant sort T. S. Eliot was. She was simply Jenny anyway, and everyone pretty much forgot the origin of her name.

My mother named a cat Morgan Le Fay. Morgan was a cat well worth knowing--and she lived to be 19.

Our Welsh Terrier is named Pippi for Pippi Longstocking.

Paula, this isn't about literary pet names, but 'names' given to wild birds over here. Perhaps it is just an old-fashioned, country-side habit, but it was very common to refer to the Jenny Wren, Robin Redbreast or Willy Wagtail and Tom Tit when naming birds . . . and not meant in a 'childish' way; adults described them so. These are the only eg's I can think of the top of my head. I'm sure there were/are also names for wild animals.
Is this just an out-of-date English thing or do other countries have similar names?

Well, I took the unimaginative and took the name 'Nigra' for our black cat...femine 'black' in spanish.
I had a Shadow (because he followed me every step), and Arson (who was bred by a lady whose hubby was a firefighter, the litter were 'Bell, Ladder, Siren, Hazard, Arson'). I still cringe at having a few times to yell 'Arson' out on the street though!

Vee, In Australia we commonly call the Major Mitchell Cockatoo "Pinky" and I have heard a fantail referred to as a "Willy Wagtail".

Here is Archie. You can see that he belongs to a reading family by the place he adopted as his favorite spot in the kitchen, and the place where he drags his favorite chew toys. He loves books, a little too much.

He weighs 8 pounds at 10 weeks. I don't know if he will fit there when he is fully grown at 30-35 pounds. I guess I'll find out when the time comes.

{{gwi:2117420}}

My Cavalier King Charles spaniel used to tuck herself into my map pocket in the car door when she was small. She still sat there at full size (around 10 kilograms/ 22 pounds) although she bulged over the top. I expect Archie will do something similar!

A late friend had a cat named Mrs Dalloway.
We used to refer to our late cat Tessa as "Tess of the Baskervilles" when she was being a ninja kitty :-)

Vee, when I grew up, we were taught the same birds' names as you, e.g. "Jenny Wren", et al.

I have a friend here who has a tiny will o' the wisp dog she has named "Ariel" after the character in Shakespeare. It fits.

I once took care of a delapidated mutt my friends rescued from the pound that they named "Napoleon". ("Nappy" for short.).

We had two springer spaniel brothers named Bilbo and Frodo. Our cousins adopted Frodo and when their mother would send them out to clean up after him, they called it cleaning up Frodo's jewels.

We also had a litter of kittens that my sister named Rascal, Pascal, Muffin and Mittens. I always thought that came from some story or book, but I don't know which one.

I have a doubly literary one for you:

My brother named his cockatiel Quasimodo - Quasi for short - after a pigeon of the same name in Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals.
That pigeon in turn had been named after the bell-ringer from Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, because it was so ugly when he got it. It was moulting from its baby down and had pin feathers sticking in every direction, just like Quasi when brother got him.

My own tiel has a sort of literary name as well: Ljúflingur, which is a metaphor used in poetry to refer to an elf or a lover. It literally means "sweet one".

We have a cat called Kingsley - not sure now whether that was after Kingsley Amis or Kingsley Shacklebolt. I suspect the latter :)