names too close?

I think this would be the right place to post this. My mom is taking care of my kittens until the end of next month when I move to a pet friendly aptment. They are two female kittens and my husband and I had a very hard time finding names that we could agree on. We finally agreed on Luna and Nova being that they both have astronomical meanings. Plus we think they're cute

Do you think that Luna and Nova sound too much alike? I don't want my kitties getting confused over their names. They're so young now that they haven't started recognising their names.

I should add too, that at my moms house they are known now as Lunatic and Novacaine, so I guess we could always just start calling them that if they start getting confused.

I think it depends on how you pronounce the names. I am not sure if you have an accent or anything. I am from Pennsylvania and the way I would say the two words they don't sound a like so it wouldn't be a problem for me.

So just carefully pronounce them so they sound different.

Hope that helps.

I don't think they sound alike at all either. Totally different consonants, so the words will sound very different to the cat as English speakers mostly pronounce the consonants anyway. They just both end the same, like Billy and Julie. Which are confusing sometimes, but not usually (my mom's name is Billie and mine is Julie, so I'm not just making it up!)

My sister's two are named Percival and Schmaltz and they get their names confused! They'll both answer to either, and they'll both answer to Schmaltzival. I think cats listen more for the talking-to-cat tone of voice than for their actual name anyway, unless you train them to pay attention to the words.

I don't think mine know their names anyway, but agree with the others that you are fine. Don't most people say LU-na and NO-va?

Only problem I could conceivably see is NO-va being very similar to "No!".
I wanted to name a dog "Vlad" forever ago but was afraid he would confuse it with "bad" as the accent is the same.

That's a good point about the 'NO' bit of Nova. I've read somewhere that cats find names ending in an 'eee' sound easiest to recognise - but mine doesn't understand a single word I say - yet!!

I also think they recognize two-syllable words the best, like Nova or Luna or Zissou. Longer words start to sound a lot more like other words, and shorter ones start to sound more like parts of other words.

I like your names, but that "no" point is a good one. Could you train yourself to say something else, like "bad" instead of "no" when they're being naughty?