The name of the strip was a clue that it was about more than a boy and his stuffed tiger.
The pair are named after John Calvin, a 16th-century French Reformation theologian, and Thomas Hobbes, a 17th-century English political philosopher.[2] At its height, Calvin and Hobbes was featured in over 2,400 newspapers worldwide; as of January 2010, reruns of the strip still appear in more than 50 countries. Nearly 45 million copies of the 18 Calvin and Hobbes books have been sold.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes