When people have babies, they typically spend eight of the nine months of gestation thumbing through baby-name books. It’s quite insane. And then they pick something like Jayden.
Jayden? What the heck is that?
When people get dogs or puppies, however, they usually rely on their own wits for naming. Sometimes wits get the better of people, and we see dogs named Peanut Butter, or Lamp. But most often we do fine without resorting to books full of names and lists like the ones we’re about to show you.
Thanks to Vetstreet, you can now obsess over naming your dog or puppy like the best of them (“the best” being any parent in a metropolitan area). The site has done the considerable legwork, examining the names of the more than 1.26 million puppies born in 2012.
Top 10 most-popular puppy names of 2012 — male
- Max
- Buddy
- Charlie
- Rocky
- Cooper
- Bear
- Bently
- Duke
- Jack
- Toby
Bently, of course, is the only real surprise, because who knew so many grandparents were getting puppies?
Top 10 most-popular puppy names of 2012 — female
- Bella
- Daisy
- Lucy
- Molly
- Lola
- Sophie
- Sadie
- Chloe (which is also the No. 8 most-popular baby name, freakishly)
(We see you, Illuminati.) - Coco
- Maggie
If you adopted a puppy in 2012 and named him or her any of the above, congratulations! Go buy yourself some khaki pants and watch Bones. You’re nicely mainstream.
Perhaps, though, you want to be on the cutting edge of dog naming, but you don’t want to go full Peanut Butter (or Lamp). You want to be trendy. Which is to say, you want to name your dog after a TV serial killer with a heart of gold.
Top 10 trendiest puppy names of 2012 — male
- Dexter
- Thor
- Gunner
- Bently
- Jax
- Ace
- Leo
- King
- Simba
- Milo
Top 10 trendiest puppy names of 2012 — female
- Luna
- Layla
- Piper
- Nala
- Stella
- Willow
- Maya
- Athena
- Charlie
- Ella
Those are some very earthly lists, don’t you think?
If you like to be a contrarian, may we suggest choosing one of the names that declined in popularity the most over the past decade, so you can nose into the so-uncool-it’s-cool territory?
Top 10 least trendy dog names of the last decade — male
- Scooter
- Dakota
- Rudy
- Spike
- Joey
- Rusty
- Scooby
- Luke
- Smokey
- Sammy
Top 10 least trendy dog names of the last decade — female
- Brandy
- Holly
- Misty
- Katie
- Lucky
- Heidi
- Casey
- Sheba
- Madison
- Shadow
Huh. We never thought a list of names could remind us so much of the Disney channel.
Source: Vetstreet
