It really shouldn't be such a complicated process, but deciding what to name a new family dog can sometimes carry almost as much weight as choosing your mate or buying a new car. Further, the more family members involved the more perplexing it can get, often leading to heated arguments. Among factors to be weighed include whether the name sounds too masculine or feminine, too trendy or not trendy enough, too cool or not cool enough or even too complicated, meaning an explanation is required.

At least in most cases dog names are not like some of the idiotic names we give our children that require them to be spelled out for everyone throughout their lives.

Nearly as fascinating as studying how the naming trends of our children have changed over the years is how the names we give our dogs has also changed.

Recently I saw a list of the overall most popular current dog names in the United States and found the name Max at the top of the list, followed closely by Buddy, Bailey, Jake, Rocky, Buster or Jack and, for the females, Molly, Maggie and Lucy.

That's quite different from the neighborhood dog names of my youth, when the most popular names were Spot, Fido, Rover, Spike, King, Rusty, Rex, Butch and Trixie.

Of those, however, Fido, Rover and Spike were probably derived more from TV cartoon dogs, as I recall no actual dogs with those names.

There were several around named Spot, which also happened to be the name of the dog in "Dick & Jane" stories from first grade.

If you were around then you might remember passages like, "See Spot run. Run Spot, run."

Other than maybe Duke, the lazy hound on "The Beverly Hillbillies," it was apparently disrespectful to name our dogs after TV or movie heroes, like Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, Petey ("Little Rascals") or Bullet ("Roy Rogers Show"), as I recall none with these names.

Nor do I recall many female dog names, probably because there weren't many female dogs around, other than Brownie, a dachshund-mix owned by Ray Price.

There was also a dog near Five Points named Elvis, and as in any era some other names bucked trends, as in the case of Boumack, Jimmy Morgan's white German shepherd or Chi-Chi, the Chihuahua that lived across the street from us.

In actuality, though, what it amounts to is that dogs in this or any era probably don't care what you call them, just as long as there's food involved and a place to sleep