Comment by dghf

No doubt there are "reasons" for all of them, but it's so far in the past and so far removed from my cultural experience as to be irrelevant and functionally nonsensical.

This does give me a reason to preserve some fact about one of my favorite cats ever in perpetuity (given the similarity of the John / Jack transition to Joe the Cat's life).

A friend's cat (who I knew as Joe the Cat) went from being called "Ivy" to "Joe" over the course of the cat's 15+ year lifetime by way of being called, successively: Ivy --> Jivey --> Jive --> Java --> Joe

Joe was calm and compliant, and arguably "a good kitty" (albeit I only knew him late in his life). My friend once described Joe as being more frantic in his youthful vigor but being "pacified through years of routine and systematic abuse".

No, my friend and his and his family didn't actually abuse Joe the Cat. He was much loved. I get to use the phrase "years of routine and systematic abuse" in my life (as often as possible!) now, though (often referring to my experiences with various pieces of software).