Why giving your dog a human name might be a bad idea.

1. You might accidentally call someone gay. But we’ve already been over that.

2. Say you’re walking your dog outside and he tries to eat a dead lizard, so you say, “No Kevin, don’t do that!” There may be a human Kevin nearby who turns and stares at you with a confused look because he’s just trying to get into his car, and he doesn’t understand why he shouldn’t do that. Is it rigged to explode?

Dog Kevin has wonderful ears.

3. Your maintenance guy comes to inspect your air conditioner. He’s charmed by your dog, but gives you strange looks whenever you say, “Come here, Kevin!” As he leaves, he asks your dog’s name. When you say it’s Kevin, he says, “No, really, what’s his name?” When you explain that you named your dog after a baseball player and a TV sitcom character, he begins laughing uncontrollably and declares, “I am Kevin as well!”

4. Imagine your dog’s name is Jenny. She gets out of the yard a lot and you have to go driving around looking for her. When you do, sometimes there is a little girl named Jenny who lives down the street and comes running over to your car whenever you yell, “Jenny! Come here, girl!”

5. Put yourself in my shoes when I decided to name my guinea pig Mr. Mort Guffman of the Oppenheimer Foundation. Try to picture the looks on the faces of passersby as I tried to walk my guinea pig down the street on a leash and harness, and whenever he slid out of it (“like a sausage”) I yelled, “No, Mr. Mort Guffman! God, you’re such a silly pig!” I bet 90 percent of the people who heard that thought I was talking on a bluetooth device.

Also, I used to set up a pen in my front yard so my guinea pig could romp in and nibble on the grass.