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Hey everybody,

A quick question occurred to me after watching the LWW movie last night with my siblings. Why do Mr. and Mrs. Beaver not seem to have first/specific names? How do they tell themselves apart from all the other beavers in Narnia if all they go by is "beaver?"
(Ok, I think it's pretty obvious that Lewis didn't really consider things like this when he started writing Narnia. He seems to have started naming his animals in Prince Caspian. But just for the sake of some fun speculation, (which Narnia fans seem to love) how would you explain the beavers' apparent lack of first names? What do you think would make good first names for Mr. and Mrs. Beaver?

In Prince Caspian, Nikabrik mentions that talking beavers are now extinct in Narnia, possibly because of the White Witch. Maybe there were so few beavers at the time of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe that they were totally defined by their species and had no names.

(OK, not a great explanation but it's the best I can come up with off the top of my head.)

I was thinking something similar, Col Klink. It reminds me of The Magician's Nephew when there is only two of each species, and we hear things like He-Elephant and She-Elephant. Irather think they don't have any name but Beaver, because when Aslan meets them in LWW, he greets them thus:

"Welcome, Peter, Son of Adam," said Aslan. "Welcome, Susan and Lucy, Daughters of Eve. Welcome He-Beaver and She-Beaver."

So he mentions Peter, Susan and Lucy's names and their ancestry, but no first names for the Beavers.

If they did have first names... even though it doesn't really seem Narnian at all, I kind of lean towards turn-of-the-century English names like John and Ernest and Hazel and Dorothy.

I think they didn’t have first names since, like the Professor, they are the only ones of their noble ilk in the first story.

In the long run, unlike the other characters we meet in LWW, I think Lewis intended Mr. and Mrs. Beaver to be the only talking Beavers in Narnia. It makes their discovery and protection of the children all the more compelling and dramatic for the story. It’s also achingly sad in PC. And elating in LB.

So I don’t think they had first names, except perhaps Heaver and Sheaver.

Great points, everyone. (I like the idea of John and Hazel Beaver, Rose!)
I wonder if C.S. Lewis maybe wrote the small explanations in Prince Caspian to account for this detail lest it should be noticed and questioned. The near-extinction theory sounds pretty convincing, but I wonder if Lewis thought of it later.

It could also be a sign of respecting the fact they were a "married" couple. Or maybe because they were introducing themselves to children?

Maybe their first names are just "Mr." and "Mrs."