Some of the other characters used in the meme are based on photographs of real dogs. Cheems is based on an image of a dog named Balltze, from Hong Kong he was adopted at the age of one and was nine years old in 2020. Walter is based on the bull terrier Nelson, who originally became popular in 2018 after his owner, Victoria Leigh, posted a picture of Nelson to Twitter, with the caption 'When u open the front-facing camera on accident.' In 2020, rumors of Nelson's death began to circulate the internet, although they turned out to be false. The most common pronunciations of 'Doge' are / ˈ d oʊ dʒ/ DOHJ and / ˈ d oʊ ɡ/ DOHG. In non-English speaking countries, 'Doge' is occasionally pronounced / ˈ d ɒ dʒ/ 'dodge'. Those unfamiliar or unacquainted with the meme also use the pronunciations / ˈ d ɒ ɡ i/ 'doggie', / ˈ d ɒ ɡ eɪ/ DOG-ay, / ˈ d oʊ ɡ eɪ/ DOH-gay, or simply like the word 'dog' itself, i.e. Online searches for the meme began to increase in July 2013. In August 2013, images of the meme were spammed on Reddit's r/MURICA subreddit by 4chan's random imageboard, /b/.
