Emma, Mascot for PetFriendsOnline.com

Emma has grown over the past 3 weeks, and she has nearly outgrown her bathroom resting place.
“Emma” (AKA: Copper Ridge Rhodesians Hot and Spicy “Emma”) has been selected as the official mascot for the all-encompassing pet website called PetFriendsOnline.com. She will lead visitors through the site and discuss site options.

Emma was named because I really liked the name, and almost named my daughter Emma. I suppose naming a wonderful puppy Emma is second best. Once named, she became the Pet Friends Online mascot, then I began researching the name origin and usage. Backwards, I know, but sometimes I do things like naming my dog, using my heart first instead of my head, which is what I did this time.

I did a Google search for “Emma,” and discovered more than a 1.2 million entries using the simple four-letter name. The most interesting is a listing about EMMA (Extensible Multimodal Annotation Language) Wu Chou, Deborah A. Dahl, Gerry McCobb, Dave Raggett, EMMA: Extensible MultiModal Annotation Markup Language, World Wide Web Consortium, Working Draft ...In light of the website mascot position, I suppose this is the most interesting of coincidences.

There is much written about Emma Goldman, a Russian-born American anarchist (1869-1940). I continued my search by turning to Wiktionary and discovered the following: Etymology: From a Frankish prototheme Ermin- or Irmin- "entire" the first part of given names such as Ermintrude and Irmgard. Emma will be everywhere on www.PetFriendsOnline.com, so I suppose “entire” is a good fit.

Whatever those four simple letters mean elsewhere, at home they represent the most wonderful, gentle, playful, fun-focused, thoughtful, warm and loving new addition to our family. Emma.