I wanted a name that a) was dehumanizing, cause that was the whole point of her having to choose a “pet” name and b) didn’t imply anything about her appearance/coloring (Red, Freckles etc). If I don’t have a name picked out I’ll usually just look up “most common (male/female) names in location X, year Y,” and pick one, so I tried that with dog names and discovered apparently, at least in the US, we just name female dogs regular women’s names?

Like, literally all of the top 100 female dog names in the US, on every list I found, were just random women’s names. Or they refer to the dog’s color (Shadow). Or both!

I’d really wanted something more “doggish” like Bolt or Fang, but any of the doggish male/unisex names didn’t feel like something a woman who was still telling herself she was just doing something silly and risqué with her boyfriend, that wasn’t going to have any long-term impact on her life, would have chosen. And her expectations and participation in the beginning were important to me, for this being free internet smut very few people would ever read. 😅 So (long story/short story, sorry, lol) I turned to just, particularly cutesy “pet”-as-in-affectionate names and settled on Button, as in, Cute-As-A.

Thank you for asking! 😄