The Portland Zoo* has a baby elephant to name. Instead of inviting the public to suggest names, the Zookeepers have proposed five names with cultural roots in the Southeast Asia range of this elephant's ancestors, and have invited the public to vote among those five. Voting ends September 11.
The Zoo has invited public involvement in naming its major newborns, but not consistently. It's had a lot of elephants to name. According to the Knower of All Things, many years ago when an elephant was to be born, the Zoo staff proposed having a contest and inviting schoolchildren to submit names. The chairman of the Zoo board said no; he had already picked the elephant's name. A male elephant, he said, would be named X and a female elephant would be named Y. Not by coincidence, the names of the chairman's son and daughter were pronounced the same as X and Y.
* I know it calls itself the Oregon Zoo now, but it's still the Portland Zoo to me -- it's a zoo and it's in Portland. I'm still irritated that it changed its name from Washington Park Zoo, a name that resulted from a contest and was proposed by a 12-year-old named Susan Sachitano who died as a teenager. A bench at the Zoo honors her memory, without, however, explaining that she had named the Zoo, an oversight that the Zoo should correct.