Pretty much all “dog people” know that the only breed named after a fictional character is the Dandie Dinmont Terrier. For those who missed the memo, Dandie Dinmont was a character in Sir Walter Scott’s novel, “Guy Mannering,” a rural farmer who owned half a dozen of the dogs. They were described so vividly, and with such affection that the dogs’ breed became synonymous with the farmer’s name;  even the call names of two of the dogs,  “Mustard” and “Pepper” became the official color descriptions in the breed standard.

What you might not know is that “Dandie” is the Scottish pet form of the name, “Andy,” short for Andrew. This is verified by several sources including the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, and the Little Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. Dandie, of Anglo-Saxon origins, was a name given to a male.  Indeed, “Dand” was common as a Christian name in the south of Scotland in the sixteenth century, and in the list of tenants under the Abbey of Kelso in 1567, one can find Dand Howy, Dand Glernet, Dand Lermont, Dand Craige, Dand Stobe, and others.  There was also Andrew alia Dandie Cranston found in the Protocol Book Ros of 1514.

Interestingly, Dandie is also a surname that was first found in Surrey in the parish of Leigh and in Lincolnshire in the Hundredorum Rolls of 1271-1273. There was Agnes Dandie  of 1633, Euphan Dandie of 1803, and David Dandie in 1827. 

Image: Dandie Dinmont Terrier by LA Shepard/thedoglover
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