Guest Author - Jilly Florio

People with bettas like coming up with perfect names for their sweet pets. Here's a fun primer to get you thinking of cool names for your own betta family.

Start with books and movies. What are your fave characters? Think epic - why not? You can name your fish after the heros in X-Men, Hercules and Xena, Buffy, Dune (try Baron for a red fish or Mau'Dib for a very active fish), the Narnia series, X-Files (Mulder would be a blue fish for his gloomy nature), Star Trek (Spock for a blue fish), Star Wars, Fantastic Four - even characters from Friends (think Ross, Joey and Chandler) or the Brady Bunch (Greg, Peter, Bobby...and even Sam the Butcher) will do nicely! One betta fancier on the Fish Forum named her troop of bettas after Gilligan Island characters - appropriate for the castaway/sea theme. :)

A fish named Alfred? Great if you like Batman. Love LOTR? Try a group of bettas named after the Hobbits (starting with Bilbo, ending with Smeagol), or the Men of Gondor (Boromir, Aragon, Faramir, Denethor) or Rohan (Theoden, Eomer, Grima Wormtongue, Hama, Helm Hammerhand), or of the Elves (Elrond, Haldir, Legolas, Celeborn, Cirdan, Glorfindel, Elladan and Elrohir). Saruman would be good for a white fish, or a fish of many colors!

If you aren't an entertainent fan, there are always the gods: think Greek, Roman, Native American, Hindu, or the heros/saints of the Bible. You can name a betta fish after Samson (if he has long, flowing fins), or Krishna (if he is blue), or even the god of war, Ares (good for a red fish).

Speaking of Roman gods, there are a TON of space-oriented names: Mercury, Saturn, Titan, Triton, Neptune (god of the sea - a good connection there), Galaxy, Cosmos, Comet, Jupiter, Mars with Phoebos and Deimos, Gallileo, Copernicus...etc.

The point is that you can find a theme and be creative. Feel free to post your name ideas on the Bella Fish Forum!

A neat theme tank for bettas:

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