Kuma

I do indeed have an Akita and I just thought a Japanese name would be appropriate and she does look like a big, adorable teddy bear, so even though my dog is a female, we chose the name Kuma (which is usually more of a male name). I don't really like when people use human names for dogs. For instance, there are a lot of dogs named "Maggie" and if you meet someone named Maggie, it's kind of offensive to say you have a dog named that, in my opinion at least. My mother-in-law does that with her poodles, naming them Madeline and Tiffany.

I 0wned a famous japanese white akita whom I called Kuma however; he was named and registered as a puppy before he was given to me as is japanese tradition. My dog became injured and I later developed a prosthetic leg of which he began to run in races and further inspire challenged children.
For awhile I thought that I had the only dog named Kuma.

I adopted a three-year-old female chocolate Pomeranian from a breeder in Louisiana who was downsizing. As usual, I went through several trial names before deciding on Kuma. She looks like a fuzzy little brown bear so it fits her well. And it's not prissy or frou-frou like so many toy dog names! I'm of Japanese descent so I knew it was a very common name, but hey, it's still pretty unusual here so that works for me.