Hook Inspired Dog Names

Though dogs have long played an important role in the lives of humans, it took a significant amount of time for them to become featured in any meaningful way outside of the occasional surge in popularity surrounding the Lassie and Old Yeller in the 1940s and 1950s, which soon led to being picked up by Disney shortly after with the likes of 101 Dalmatians and The Lady and the Tramp. 

There was a significant lull until the late 1980s when Turner & Hooch hit the silver screen and was soon followed by more titles in the 1990s than you could shake a stick at (which might be a bad idea anyway, if Beethoven and Marley were any indicators). 

But before they were stars in that capacity, great writers were already incorporating dogs into their work. J.M. Barrie, the Scottish novelist and playwright who penned Peter Pan, created a unique character when he came up with Nana, who happens to be the nurse of John, Wendy, and Michael Darling, the trio of children who adventure off to Neverland in attempts to escape their impending maturity and adulthood. The most intriguing part? Nana is a dog and the only thing the Darlings’ father George, could afford on his modest pay. 

During the earliest versions of Barrie’s plays, Nana was often portrayed by a boy or man in a dog suit. She is meant to be a small form of comic relief, yet is not intended to be undersold by her canine nature and is used to represent a competent and reliant nurturer, regardless of her species. 

The sentiment is captured in Act I of Barrie’s The Complete Peter Pan, which details her actor and presence as such: “She will probably be played by a boy, if one clever enough can be found, and must never be on two legs except on those rare occasions when an ordinary nurse would be on four.” 

While most of Nana’s duties and character traits are clearly laid out, what remains a mystery is what type of dog she was actually supposed to be. In the original script, she is described to be a Newfoundland, one of two types of dogs Barrie himself owned. But when Peter Pan was first conceived, Nana was a St. Bernard and was portrayed in both the Disney version and the 2003 adaptation as such. While the Disney version didn’t stay true to Barrie’s original stage directions, they did take a page out his book (pun intended) with the way she composed herself and fell into the overall storyline. Nearly every adaptation, remake, and take on the original Peter Pan features Nana, including Hook, in which she is portrayed as an English Sheepdog.