Winnie The Pooh is a fluffy little cuddly bear who lives in the Hundred Acre Wood with all his little animal friends. His name is Winnie, and Pooh is what he is. Apparently this is a previously undiscovered species of bear native to that one specific area of England (in the cartoons it looks more like a meadow than a wood, and I'm not sure that there's 100 acres of undeveloped land left in England, but whatever). No one calls him by his name, though, they just call him what he is.

This is typical of life in the Hundred Acre Wood, though, and Pooh should feel fortunate to even have a name. None of the rest of them do, except Eeyore, and frankly that's not much of a name, although it is preferable to what he is, in which case they would just be calling him Ass. There's Owl, Rabbit, Piglet. You might think Tigger is an exception, although its not a far cry from "tiger" and he is always saying that's "a tigger" and not "THE Tigger", so I don't know that he is. Kanga and Roo are also technically exceptions to this rule, although again its not far off.

If these animals are supposed to be "alive" only in Christopher Robin's imagination, then he must be one of the least imaginative kids there is, or at least really really bad at coming up with names. Luckily, he's also a cartoon character who doesn't age, or at some point he would grow up and marry and have children and have to come up with names for them. And they would be stuck with names like "Boy," "Girl," and "Baby".

If they are supposed to be real animals living in the woods, then, like Tigger, they should each count themselves fortunate to be the only one of their kind. The only species there is more than one of is the kangaroo, and Christopher Robin just split that name into "Kanga" and "Roo". It would have really sounded stupid to have two rabbits name "Rab" and "Bit". Either that, or they would all be named Rabbit and no one would know who was talking to whom.

Pooh and his friends are very popular. They are supposed to represent innocence and fun. To me, they represent something else.

Pooh himself exhibits no self-control and represents self-indulgence almost to the point of addiction, even if it is just to "honey" (and if you really dug into, I bet it would turn out that in turn of the century England street addicts called opium "honey" or something like that). Piglet is jittery and scared and worried about everything. Eeyore is depressed. Rabbit is angry at all times, and his anger is undirected and nebulous. Tigger is obviously hyper-active and lacks focus.

I'm surprised that a drug company hasn't come out with a line of children's medications based on these characters. They could be like Flintstones vitamins, you know, with little chewable anti-anxiety medication in the shape of Piglet, and chewable Prozac shaped like Eeyore, etc.

Maybe Christopher Robin himself suffered from all of these impairments as a child and his way of coping with them was to assign each of them a name in the form of a stuffed animal. This is similar to what many therapists believe happens to adult victims of Multiple Personality Disorder. In a way, the Hundred Acre Wood is Christopher Robin's own little therapy group, where each of his disorders struggles for dominance amongst themselves and competes for his attention.