Do you name your rifles?

My daughter and I were talking about one of my rifles this weekend, and she was confusing it with another one I own. I realized that I was always referring to them by one of the following
1. Manufacturer
2. Caliber
3. Cartridge

I thought I need to give them some real names.

How many of you give pet names to your rifles? Let's hear about "old Bertha" or whatever pet names you have!

I bought a 7.62x54r about 5 yrs. ago and my wife nicknamed it "Thor".The other rifles and pistols are just their caliber name.

Well, kinda. Got to where they look to much alike.

Ha! Yep...I've got particular pet names for them......depending on how "picky" they are or their overall demeanor.

My 6-pound .300 Win Mag is "Wasp Sting".
My 12 pound .300 RUM is "Dragon's Breath".

All of mine are addressed by make and caliber. A friend names every big game animal he kills which I find a bit strange.

I give mine 2 different kinds of names. One is a friendly name that goes with the receiver like Rolling Stone, Mjolnir, Maginot Line and others. These are usually 3rd order morphs of some distinctive feature that I'd have noticed when I originally got each one. I almost never refer to them by those names. It's just for my own use in keeping track of a gun's history since I have quite a few and "Savage #4" is a little less than totally meaningful.

The second name I do use to refer to them when discussing them with others. These names reference what the thing currently looks like (I tend to paint my rifles very distinctively) and includes things like deadpool gun, hot dog gun, big & little snake guns, big & little green guns, red gun and on and on. These nicknames are usually given by other people and only last as long as the gun is configured in one specific form. When I burn out a barrel and replace it or make other significant changes to the configuration (excluding optics) the gun gets repainted totally differently and it gets a new nickname as soon as someone coins one for it.

Built a 700 223 with full diameter barrel, 1.250". Named her "Rosie" after Rosie O'Donnell cuz of the fat barrel....

Comancheria said:

My 6-pound .300 Win Mag is "Wasp Sting".
My 12 pound .300 RUM is "Dragon's Breath".

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Oh man, those are some awesome names.
A 6lb 300wm? I think I'd call it "shoulder breaker"! lol

I kind of have to.
I keep load notebooks and targets throughout a barrels life. Even when the barrel is shot out I'll keep the notes for future reference. Every time I rebarrel an action I have to use a different name ( 270wsm, 270sm, M270wsm...)
Maybe I should just go with old girlfriend names and be done with it.

BallisticsGuy said:

... These names reference what the thing currently looks like (I tend to paint my rifles very distinctively) and includes things like deadpool gun, hot dog gun, big & little snake guns, big & little green guns, red gun and on and on...

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Whoa I think I'd like to see a picture of "deadpool gun" and "hot dog gun"!

mrjashu said:

Whoa I think I'd like to see a picture of "deadpool gun" and "hot dog gun"!

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Ask and you shall receive.
Deadpool gun (6XC) with the black mag. It also has a red mag. I elected to not go the full 9 with the white graffiti. Up close you can see a bit more red/maroon on the barrel.:

before that it was hot-dog gun (.243AI). Barrel retired at 1500rds.

before that it had a Texas coral snake paint job as a .308, before that it was much more plain Jane tan and black with a different butt stock on it. Before that it was pretty much just a out of the box Savage 10FPSR in tan & black in a factory tupperware stock.

I name mine after the first animal they shoot.
223; Skunk
270: Piggie
308: BB (Black Buck) or Hulk b/c its a green Accuracy International
6.5 SAUM: WT, (White Tail)

Interesting. I can't recall ever naming one of my guns but I like the creativity you guys show in naming yours. When I was an SP in the USAF, one of my co-workers decided his M-16 was "Haboo" and he would talk to it at times. Just one of those things that made me go, "Hmmmm..."

Once I became the armorer, the guns were all numbered so that's how we referred to them (Rack placement and position in that rack, so something like: A-5 or C-12.)

As I think about it, numbers or calibers are fine, but names are COOL! The A-10 is a nice plane identifier, but the "Warthog" is bad-a_ss. The Honda CBR929RR was a good motorcycle, but calling it a "Fireblade" made it sound like a road-weapon. I may have to come up with names for my 'favorite' guns now that you've got me thinking about it.

My Remington 700 titanium in .308 Win is going to be first to get a name and it will be called 'son-of-a-b_i_t_c_h' because every time I pull the trigger on that super light thing and it kicks me so hard that those words just tumble from my mouth.