Naming Your Theriotypes

for me it depends on the context information. As mentioned before, if you were a pet and were given a name that makes sense, and any other way a human could of given you a name makes sense, such as shelter/zoo/animal rescue, ect, as all of those could result in a human giving you a name.

I also think it could make sense if you're an otherkin (not all otherkins), but like, humanoids, or anyone who could talk like a human, could also have a name.

Also I think I've heard somewhere (idk if it's true, so sorry if it's not) that studies shown that elephants gave each other names, not like humans do, but apparently they make a noise that resembles a different elephants name (Idk if this makes sense)

Or maybe, someone might just not really know their theriotype that well, or are still discovering one, and somehow realize their name before their type.

(Idk if any of this made sense) So I feel like there could be a lot of reasons why people might have a name for their theriotype.

On the other hand, if you just name a theriotype for no reason, that seems a little strange to me. It's kind of like if you could shape shift (Ik that's not possible) and you name whatever you turn into, even though it's still you just in a different body? Anyway, it's still your identity and you can name it if you want to.

@-CR4ZY.C4T- said:

(2024-06-20 2:19)-CR4ZY.C4T- Wrote:  for me it depends on the context information. As mentioned before, if you were a pet and were given a name that makes sense, and any other way a human could of given you a name makes sense, such as shelter/zoo/animal rescue, ect, as all of those could result in a human giving you a name.

I also think it could make sense if you're an otherkin (not all otherkins), but like, humanoids, or anyone who could talk like a human, could also have a name.

Also I think I've heard somewhere (idk if it's true, so sorry if it's not) that studies shown that elephants gave each other names, not like humans do, but apparently they make a noise that resembles a different elephants name (Idk if this makes sense)

Or maybe, someone might just not really know their theriotype that well, or are still discovering one, and somehow realize their name before their type.

(Idk if any of this made sense) So I feel like there could be a lot of reasons why people might have a name for their theriotype.

On the other hand, if you just name a theriotype for no reason, that seems a little strange to me. It's kind of like if you could shape shift (Ik that's not possible) and you name whatever you turn into, even though it's still you just in a different body? Anyway, it's still your identity and you can name it if you want to.

I think that it is fine to name your theriotypes, as long as you aren't making them seem like a separate being. I myself name my theriotypes, but only as a faster, more simple way of saying them. E.g. I don't call my snow leopard theriotype'snow leopard'
I call him "blizzard"

(2024-06-21 18:03)phsyco_cat30 Wrote:  I think that it is fine to name your theriotypes, as long as you aren't making them seem like a separate being. I myself name my theriotypes, but only as a faster, more simple way of saying them. E.g. I don't call my snow leopard theriotype'snow leopard'
I call him "blizzard"[/u]

Yeah i guess that also makes sense, as long as you still understand it's you and not a seperate being.

I don't call my kintype by another name because I'm unable to separate myself from my kintype in any way. So I just call my kintype 'angel' because it's the species.
I don't understand naming your kintypes, because they're not separate individuals. Except when you give yourself a nickname that fits the theriotype.

My werewolf theriotype doesn't have a name, same with my jaguar theriotype. They just are nameless beings who exist as part of me.

This discussion made me start to think about my experiences and reflect on other's experiences. I might be in the camp of not having completely integrated theriotypes. Realizing that, a lot of my experiences make more sense! I didn't think about it being a separate theriotype explanation because when I first explored this, I looked into median and plural experiences, and none of them fit, so I just shoved it to the back of the identity shelf.

I'm polykin and I'll just group all of them under theriotypes for simplicity. My explanation is spiritual with some soul integration stuff that would take awhile to explain, but with how I see my soul and polytherian nature, they ARE kind of separate! I don't experience my kintypes as anything autonomous or self-thinking, so I wouldn't count this as a plural experience. I do experience shifts as more intense than I think most people in my system do at least and there's a bigger difference between a "grounding" shift like my system uses and a therian shift.

For me it's almost like if you imagine a color wheel where all my kintypes are a separate color but I'm still in the middle experiencing all of them. They're a part of me and separate like how the color white is a part of the color red. Shifting is more extreme because of this.

I'm still an animal and completely identify as all my kintypes despite what I saw a few people assuming. I probably still wouldn't name them because I'm not creative enough (my name is a shortening of a type of cow), but I could see someone else in my situation naming their theriotypes.

I could also realize I'm wrong or change my mind, but that kind of clicked something that I've been a bit confused on for awhile because I kept trying to shove it into a plural experience when it wasn't.

-Pon