We all know that Dogster members are the coolest pet parents around. You’re passionately dedicated to the health and happiness of your fur kids and to keeping up with the latest dog news, views, and Internet memes. So it should come as no surprise that you’re also leaders of the cultural zeitgeist when it comes to naming your dogs.
Dogster has chowed down the data and dug up 2014’s 10 most popular dog names within our thriving Community, where pup parents such as yourself share pictures and diaries, along with participating in groups and advice forums, where you find guidance from other owners on food and nutrition, senior dog care, behavior and training, and lots more.
There are close to 585,000 dogs with profile pages on Dogster, which makes this particular year-end dog-name list one of the most comprehensive you’ll find anywhere. So without further ado, drumroll please …
Top 10 female names on Dogster
- Bella
- Lucy
- Daisy
- Molly
- Maggie
- Chloe
- Sadie
- Sophie
- Lola
- Roxy
Top 10 male names on Dogster
- Buddy
- Max
- Charlie
- Jake
- Rocky
- Jack
- Toby
- Bailey
- Buster
- Bear
Want more? DoggieNames.com recently released its own world’s top 10 most popular dog names list, derived via data not only from Dogster, but also from pet insurers in English-speaking countries such as the U.S., the UK, Canada, and Australia, along with other online pet communities and city or county records in Seattle, Denver, San Francisco, Toronto, Wellesley (Massachusetts), Anchorage, Cincinnati, Lansing (Michigan), Eau Claire (Wisconsin), New York, and Los Angeles. That adds up to more than a million names. And you’ll be happy to know that Dogster members are pretty on point.
Dogster’s list brings Chloe and Sophie to the top 10, instead of Coco and Princess, and adds Buster, Bear, and Jake, in lieu of Lucky, Cooper, and Duke, who appear on the world’s most popular male dog name list. However, all of Dogster’s monikers are in the world’s top 15.
Why Bella works
Bella has been the most popular dog name around the globe for more than five years. We used to think this was linked to the Twilight series of books and movies, since it’s the name of that series’ popular heroine, but now it looks like it stands on its own as a cross-cultural favorite.
Bella is a lovely name that means “beautiful” in Italian, and it also follows the trainer-recommended guidelines of giving your dog a name with one or two syllables, led by a strong consonant, and ending in a long vowel sound like e, o, or a.
Above all else, your pet’s name is a safety and training tool. You want her to alert to the name as soon as she hears it, immediately stop and follow your command. This prevents your dog from getting into dangerous situations such as darting out into traffic. In fact, all of the names on both the male and female lists fall under those recommendations. So yay, Dogster members!
Nostalgic names rule
Of course, the name you give your dog is a personal choice that can reflect cultural trends. And the current favorites from around the world point to a more nostalgic, retro vibe. Looking to the past provides comfort when there are so many unknowns in the future — and there’s often no more comforting presence in our lives than our dogs. So it makes sense we’d want to give them names that harken back to a simpler time. For example, the current top ten dog names for girls could’ve come out of a tea party RSVP list from the 1880s, when Daisy, Lucy, Sadie, Charlie, and Roxy were some of the most popular baby names, according to the U.S. Social Security Administration.
It also looks like pop culture doesn’t have as much to do with dog-name popularity as once believed. If it did, we’d for sure be seeing Frozen’s Elsa, Anna, and Olaf on the top of the list.
No more Rover?
The shift from monikers such as Rover and Ranger to more “human” names such as Molly and Jack might also reflect the fact that most dogs are no longer working and hunting on farms and ranches for a living. Instead, they’re now the doted-upon leisure class that’ve been welcomed into our homes as beloved family members and waited on hand and foot. This might then explain the names Princess and Duke showing up on the world’s most popular list.
This trend appears not just in the U.S., but across the globe as well. And the fact that so many of the same names appear on lists both here and abroad shows just how connected our cultures have become. Dogster has active members in several countries, including in the UK, Canada, and Australia, and in fact, DoggieNames’s research shows that Bella also happens to be the most popular dog name in Finland.
And though the top 10 most popular dog names work as baby names, too, there’s surprisingly little crossover in the human vs. pet name list. The Social Security Administration recently came out with its own top 10 baby name list, and while the monikers are somewhat similar, there was no crossover at all. For example, Sophia, Emma, and Olivia are the most common girl names, while the baby boy names are led by Jackson, Aiden, and Liam, which kinda sound like the latest boy band out of London.
How to decide on a name?
It’s always nice to choose a name that means something to you and your family, whether it’s from a favorite book, movie, hometown, or sports team. That’s why I created DoggieNames.com, to help you shake loose some more creative ideas by browsing through our database of more than 5000 names, searchable by all kinds of categories, including Most Popular.
It used to be that it didn’t really matter how popular the name was — you were really only going to be talking to your pet around your house or yard. But now, with the rise of daycare and dog parks, it might make sense to choose a moniker that’s a little more creative and different. You don’t want your special girl or guy mixed up with the 12 other Maxes or Bellas at the groomer or vet. And you want to be able to call and control your dog at the park. So unless you want to be trampled by 10 different Buddys, maybe you should choose a slightly different “B” name, such as Baxter or Barney.
One Dogster family knows they chose the best moniker for their Buddy, who “earned his name because he was the definition of man’s best friend. … Buddy was there for you when you were feeling down. He could sense it and come up to you and nuzzle you to let you know everything will be okay. … He is not with us any more but he will always be my Buddy.”
Does your dog have a popular name? How did you decide on it? Let us know in the comments below.
Read more about dog names:
- 10 Holiday-Related Dog Names
- The World’s Most Popular Dog Names for 2013
- Let’s Talk: What’s the Strangest Dog Name You’ve Ever Heard
- The 10 Best Dog Names From the “Harry Potter” Universe
- The Best Dog Names Inspired by Major League Baseball
- The World’s Most Popular Dog Names for 2013
About the author: Atlanta’s own Toni Perling is a writer and web content provider, mostly about dogs, hence her blogger name, Doggienista. 🙂 And hence, her two beautiful rescue dogs: Daisy Jo and Bud Earl. She tweets for them at DaisyJoBudEarl, and shares her collection of dog names and trends at DoggieNames.com. Toni started asking her parents for a puppy pretty much the minute she learned to speak, but they held off until she was the ripe old age of 10, when the family welcomed a Miniature Schnauzer named Truffles. In between, she inhaled every book about dogs ever written and can pretty much identify any breed by sight. She’s also a longtime supporter of spay/neuter/rescue, and adopted her first dog, a sweet lovable mutt named Sophie, from an Los Angeles County shelter.
