Nearly everyone at Boyfriend’s medical school owns pets. And if you want to figure out whether any given pet was acquired before or during medical school, all you have to do is ask its name.
For example, there’s a dog named Churg, a kitten named Buccinator, about 3 or 4 cats named Eo (were these people all allergic to their own cats? What’s with that?), a dog named Ham (for Hamartoma), a dog named Chlamydia (finally shortened to “Track” when they realized that yelling “Chlamydia! Come!” in public areas attracted everyone’s attention except the dog’s..) and finally, a pit bull named Clyde.
Since Clyde seemed to be the exception to the “pets in medical school must be named medical things” rule, Boyfriend always thought Clyde’s owner was the only sane one. Then he found out that it was short for Sternocleidomastoid.
I don’t know why there’s so many pets at his school in the first place. I can count the number of pets at my school on one finger, and it’s named Grey. Which is also its color and breed.
Boyfriend and I agree that we would spare any large pets from our attempts at whimsy, and only give medical names to fish. If we ever get a Beta, I want to name it “Lactam”. Boyfriend prefers “Blocker”. (Yeah, we’re no better than anyone else about this sort of thing.)
Action Potential 
For the record, lactam is a much better name than blocker.
You could just go for Toprol though (short for metoprolol).
Quite a few people in my class have pets, mostly dogs and cats, but I know of at least one other bird and I’m sure there’s some fish. I don’t think there’s any medical names though, even of the newly acquired pets (which most of them are since most of my classmates are straight out of college). I’m not sure if it’s stranger that there aren’t any medical names here, or that there’s so many at your boyfriend’s school…
I think only a few people in my class had pets.
My Betta is Ed. It’s not short for anything. The fish changes, but the name stays.
Morbid sense of humor time:
In grade 11, we had to do a fetal pig dissection. To get some bonus marks, our teacher promised 5% extra for whoever came up with the best name.
Notable entries included:
Magnum P.I.(G)
Notorious P.I.C.
Piglet
Piggie Smalls
I took a slightly different tack, and when the teacher asked what my fetal pig was named, I told her:
Roe
I won that extra 5%.
… Brilliant.
What about sphincter, sphinx for short?
M
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