Hodge

Not Hugh — Roger

Our own listing's background note derives Hodge from a Middle English diminutive of the name Hugh, meaning "bright mind". The second half of that is a fair description of Hugh. The first half is wrong.

Hodge is a pet form of Roger. Medieval English produced a set of these by taking a name and wearing it down to something shoutable: Robert became Hob and Dob, Richard became Hick and Dick, William became Will and Whip, and Roger became Hodge. They were rustic forms, used of country people, and they were common enough to turn into surnames — which is why Hodges, Hodgson, Hodkinson and Dodge all descend from Roger rather than from anything else.

The word also survives as a common noun. An obsolete sense of "hodge" is simply a rustic, a country person, which is exactly what the name was for.

The cat who was bought oysters by hand

Hodge is also one of the best-documented cats in English literature. He belonged to Samuel Johnson, the lexicographer, and he is remembered because of a passage in James Boswell's Life of Johnson, published in 1791. Boswell describes Johnson going out himself to buy oysters for the cat, so that the servants would not have the trouble and would not come to resent the animal.

Boswell, who admits in the same passage that he disliked cats, also records Johnson stroking Hodge and saying, "he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed" — having first observed out loud that he had had cats he liked better. It is a small, entirely human scene, and it is the reason Hodge is the eighteenth-century cat people can still name.

There is a small joke buried in the record, if you like this sort of thing. Hodge is also the pseudonym used by a well-known British crossword compiler — whose actual first name is Roger. The pet form had come full circle back to the name it was made from, four centuries later.

Hodge as a dog name

HODJ. One syllable, five letters, opening on an h and closing on a j sound. It is short, unmistakable and has no cluster to lose, which makes it a good recall cue — though h is a quiet consonant, so the name leans on its vowel more than most.

It reads as old English and slightly comic, which is where our listing's "friend" tag is coming from and is much closer to right than the meaning it gives. A dog called Hodge sounds like a dog in a story about a village. That is either the appeal or the objection, depending on what you were after.

See also: Roger · Hugh · Hugo · Rufus · Tobias

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