DICK AND JANE AND CERBERUS AND PUFF. Recently, Mary Jane’s short play “Spring Cleaning in Hell” was performed at the Theatre Artists Workshop. Hades and Persephone were characters, and Cerberus (Hades’s three headed dog) was referred to several times. Our friend Shannon Hoover remarked that in Greek “Cerberus” was the equivalent of “Spot”. I looked it up. Sure enough, this entry on the Behind the Name website says for “Cerberus”: “Latinized form of the Greek ΚεÏβεÏος (Kerberos), which possibly meant ‘spotted’. In Greek myth this was the name of the three-headed dog that guarded the entrance to Hades.”
The first book my class mates in first grade read some seventy years ago featured the adventures of Dick and Jane, their little sister Sally, their dog Spot and their cat Puff. I find it jolly to think of a primer where the family dog is named “Cerberus”.