Origins of "pluto" and "woodstock"?
I have a few questions about these name origins.
1) How did the name "Pluto" (the dog) originate? Is it possible that "Pluto" came from "Bluto", or vice versa, judging that Popeye and "Steamboat Mickey" were made around the same time? (What years did they come out?
2) What came first, Woodstock, the bird from Snoopy, or Woodstock, the music festival? Was one named after the other? Again, when did these events occur (Woodstock the bird coming out whenever Charles thought him up or published him.)
PLUTO…
The pup first appeared in Walt Disney’s short The Chain Gang[4], released in the USA on August 18, 1930. However, the dog had no name. In the next appearance on October 23, 1930, in The Picnic[5] the dog is named not Pluto, but Rover. It was in The Moose Hunt[6], released on May 8, 1931, that the dog is called Pluto the Pup, the studio’s original name. A September 1931 model sheet for the character with that name is illustrated in Barrier’s Hollywood Cartoons.[7]
Several months had passed between the naming of what was believed to have been the ninth planet, Pluto, on March 24, 1930, and the attachment of that name to the dog character. Venetia Burney (later Venetia Phair), who as an eleven-year-old schoolgirl had suggested the name Pluto for the planet, remarked in 2006: “The name had nothing to do with the Disney cartoon. Mickey Mouse’s dog was named after the planet, not the other way around.”[8]
Although it has been claimed that the Disney studio named the dog after the planet (rather than after the mythical god of the underworld), this has not been verified. Disney animator Ben Sharpsteen has said: "We thought the name [Rover] was too common, so we had to look for something else. [...] We changed it to Pluto the Pup, [...] but I don’t honestly remember why. I think we were stoned."[9]
WOODSTOCK…
festival was ‘69…
The first bird that bore a prototypical resemblance to Woodstock visited Snoopy in 1967, and this is generally considered his debut, though Schulz didn’t give him a name and establish him as a full-fledged character until June 22, 1970. Schulz acknowledged in several print and TV interviews in the mid-1970s that he took Woodstock’s name from the rock festival. (The festival’s logo showed a dove of peace perched on a guitar.)