Many animals, especially dogs, were given proper names in early modern Spain. When Gonzalo Argote de Molina describes how Philip II's court hunted down an escaped lion, he does not give a name for the lion, but describes a Spanish dog who had a French name, Lionel (“Little Lion”). Argote mentions many other proper names for dogs in his book on hunting. In the chapter titled “De la fidelidad de los canes y diferencias de sus nombres” (“Of Dog's Faithfulness and Their Different Names”), Gonzalo Argote de Molina writes that the dogs from England and Ireland had names whose pronunciation was strange and, when those dogs arrived in Spain, Spanish hunters butchered their names so badly that, although Argote knew their names, he decided not to mention them. Argote does, however, mention the names of Philip II's well-known hunting dogs, such as Bocanegra and Manchado (a dog name that Cervantes also used for a sheepherding dog in Galatea). Argote also mentions two other canines: Amadis, who belonged to Lorenzo Suárez de Figueroa (1345–1409), the legendary founder of the Order of Santiago in Seville, and Mahoma (“Mahommed”), the famous dog who earned a salary fighting Moors on behalf of his master Día Sánchez de Carvajal (ca. 1380–ca. 1467).

In contrast to Argote, who memorialized the names of famous historical dogs, this book has named five animals that were never given proper names. Abada the rhinoceros and Hawa’i the elephant were diplomatic gifts from the Mughal Empire to the Habsburgs.