In Minecraft, animals are used to obtain meat, to serve as transport and as defense. Even so, some people decide to have an animal as a pet, and want to give it a name. Therefore, today we will teach you how to name animals and pets in Minecraft.
How to Name Animals and Pets in Minecraft
Entity names
Any object in Minecraft that moves and is not a block is considered an entity. It’s a bit more complicated, but that’s the simple explanation. Some objects like Armor Stands are entities. However, most of the entities are animals, monsters, or the player himself.
Some entities may have a name assigned. The game remembers this name and displays it on top of it. This is especially useful with monsters, as a named monster will not disappear unless the difficulty is set to peaceful.
Animal names
Animals are entities, and as such, they can be named. Animals and monsters display their name above their head , unlike other entities, as a support for armor.
How to name the animals?
All mobs (Animals and monsters) can have a name assigned, with the exception of the Dragon and the same player. To name an animal, you need to make or craft a name tag .
Name tags
Name Tags are hard to come by in the Minecraft world, as they cannot be crafted . There are three ways to obtain them: Chests in dungeons, abandoned mines and mansions in the forest can contain name tags, and are the easiest way to obtain them.
In the Java version, Abandoned Mine Chests have a 42% chance of containing Name Tags, Dungeon Chests 28.3%, and Mansion Chests 28.3% as well. There is also a 0.8% chance of obtaining them by fishing . Also, you can buy them from a villager with the profession of high-level librarian.
How to use name tags
To name an animal, you must first name the tag . To do this, you must craft an anvil , and it also costs an experience level. Simply place the label in the first space of the anvil and change the name in the area above. The resulting label will have the name you want.
To name the animal, you must take your name tag and press the ‘Use’ button on the animal. By doing that, the animal will already have the name you want.
After using a name tag, it disappears; so you must think very well how you want to use it. Also, naming a tag always costs an experience level, no matter how many tags you name at the same time.
If you managed to tame a horse , using the name tag will make you ride it. To ‘Use’ the tag instead of riding on it, crouch down and then use the tag.
After renaming an animal, you can never remove the name from it, but you can use another tag to rename anything else. Animals only show their name if you view them from less than 4 blocks away, and there are some angles that don’t allow you to see their name.
Other uses of the name tag
Monsters and animals in the game tend to disappear if the player is not nearby. So a very common practice is to use name tags to prevent this from happening. An animal that has been named does not disappear, unless it dies, and a named monster only disappears if the difficulty is changed to peaceful.
Also, the creator of Minecraft added some ‘easter eggs’ or inside jokes that you can activate with the name tags, some are:
- A vindicator named ‘Johnny’ will be much more aggressive than normal. This is a reference to the movie ‘The Shining’.
- Any mob called ‘Dinnerbone’ or ‘Grumm’ will appear backwards . This is a reference to developer Nathan Adams, aka Dinnerbone, who identifies with his avatar backwards.
