Salem is a cat's name to me. Wasn't Salem the cat in "
Sabrina, the Teenage Witch"? The association with the witch trials doesn't bother me a bit, maybe because it all happened so long ago. I find the feline association to be more troubling, odd as that sounds.
The prn is also a bit silly. I don't know anyone who would prn it say-LEM. I expect little Salem is eventually just going to give up correcting people at some point in his or her life and default to the more common prn.
BTW, if anything, Salem is a boy's name to me. Hey, wasn't the cat from "
Sabrina" a boy? Maybe that's why the name seems to masculine to me.