COEUR d'ALENE - Don Vogt had to make a pact with his wife before buying his 17-foot 1938 Chris-Craft deluxe runabout in 1989 for use on Hayden Lake.

He had to promise his wife, Jennifer, the boat would be named after her. It was an easy decision, a no brainer.

Vogt had "Jennifer II" docked Saturday along the Coeur d'Alene Resort boardwalk during the Coeur d'Alene Wooden Boat Show.

"Sometimes people come up and say, 'Who's Jennifer?'" said Vogt, of Mercer Island, Wash. "I always look at them and say, 'You obviously aren't married.'"

He added, "It ain't going to be an old girlfriend."

Many boat names are of the female variety or romantic, but many others are nostalgic or just a fun play on words. The name shows some of the owner's personality, and adds to the boat's personal attachment.

Darryl Onia, of Calgary, Alberta, got his first boat ride - in a wooden one, naturally - when he was 8 years old, taken along by some family friends, the Rileys. He still has a black-and-white photograph from that day, with himself sitting in the boat.

Combine that with a radio and TV show he loved as a kid, "The Life of Riley," and Onia found a perfect name for his 14-foot 1956 Aristocraft Torpedo wooden boat, "Life o' Riley."

"And this guy had a really good life," he said of the radio and TV show. "Good stuff happened to him all the time."

To some, a wooden boat can be a symbol of the good life.

So maybe a brand of Cuban cigar might make a splashy name?

Jim Dickson thought so, dubbing his rounded and somewhat cigar-looking 22-foot 1947 Greavette streamliner, "Cohiba," even though he doesn't smoke a lot of cigars.

He did buy a box of Cohibas once while in the Dominican Republic, he said.

"Originally I was going to call the boat 'Stogie,' because it was round like a cigar," said Dickson, of Kelowna, British Columbia. "My girlfriend, she never did like that name."

Turned out the name "Stogie" had been picked by some other people anyway.

"People come up with names through some experience in life or something," he said.

Tom Cathcart, of Redmond, Wash., had something else in mind when he came up with the name "Huckledybuck" for his 22-foot 1953 110-S Sportsman V-drive runabout.

"We sat around trying to come up with names that sort of reflected speed," he said.

He envisioned a couple of guys on a beach somewhere watching a boat speed by, and one guy turns to the other and says, with a Canadian accent, "Boy look at that boat go, she's really going 'huckledybuck,' eh?"

A month ago, the boat got an award in Sandpoint for its name, he said.

Steve Parmentier, of Spokane, said his grandmother, Ruth Parmentier, owned a craft shop in Coeur d'Alene and was a carpenter.

So when the family's 26-foot 1964 Chris-Craft sedan needed a name, they came up with "Crafty Lady."

"We decided since it's a Chris-Craft and she was a crafty lady, then 'Crafty Lady' was the right name for the boat," Steve Parmentier said.

It was given the name after being restored about eight years ago.

Ruth and her husband, Jay Parmentier, bought the boat in the early 1950s. They built a home on Lake Coeur d'Alene, at Everwell Bay.

Cindy Leist, of Coeur d'Alene, came up with the name "Simpler Times" for her and her husband Jeff's 34-foot 1941 Chris-Craft deluxe sedan.

"We just figured it was built pre-World War II," she said. "Times were simpler then. The name just fit."

Jeff Leist added, "You just know it when you hear it."