“We thought the name Luna was unique at the time,” Chris Conrady said of his mixed breed rescue dog. He brought her home at four months old and named her because the day he brought her home was a pink supermoon. “Soon we realized there were a lot of dogs with the same name,” Conrady said. “Sometimes we call her Luna Rose to differentiate her.”
In 2022, Luna became the most popular female dog name in America, wresting Bella out of the number one spot the name had enjoyed since 2009. For male dogs, Max has been the most popular male dog name since the 1980s. In dog years, that’s like if the same human name had been popular since the 1700s.
Why Were Bella & Max Popular? Blame Twilight
Marilyn Gore still hasn’t met other dogs named Max but has one at home. When her sister texted her a photo of two dogs that had showed up in her front yard and needed a home, she said she’d take “the small one.” Gore named the dog, a scruffy Terrier mix with wheat colored fur, Max because his furry paws reminded her of Max from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. “I consider it short for Maximus,” Gore said. “He’s a small dog and I think one’s reach should exceed one’s grasp.”
Talking to pet parents who had Maxes and Bellas and Lunas, they uniformly didn’t realize that the names were so popular. Then they started taking their dogs to grooming salons, dog parks, or the veterinarian’s office where they had to specify which Max they were there to pick up.
There were many different reasons for giving their dogs (or cats) these popular names. Luna wasn’t just a word for the moon but also the name of the cat in Sailor Moon and Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter–all namesakes pet parents pointed to for inspiration. Bella may have become popular in 2009, the year after Twilight came out and became a massive bestseller, but it also means “beautiful”. While Twilight dog names as a Google search term fell around 2011, Harry Potter dog names continues to rise over time. And the period Harry Potter dog names really peaked? 2020, when the great pandemic pet adoption boom occurred.
Pets Have Human Names Because We See Them As Part of the Family
In the past, most pets had names like Spot, Rover, Princess, or Lady. Pet names were distinct from human names, said Laura Wattenberg, author of The Baby Name Wizard. She added, “Starting in the 1990s, people started naming their pets more like how they name their children.” There are still plenty of dogs named Bear, Merle, or Cooper but now we have Zoe, Stella, and Milo at the dog park too.
When human names—think Ella, Zoe, or Liam—become too popular, parents move along to new ones that they hope will be more unique. With the rise of the internet, it gave the illusion that anyone could be your next-door neighbor. It wasn’t just there being two other Christinas in class that made a name seem too popular. Thanks to social media, you are now seeing Christinas there too. In fact, TikTok baby name consultants reported to Vox about the rise of inquires from parents wanting their child’s name to be unique.
Dog owners like to have unique names for their pets as much as parents of human children do, said Alexandra Horowitz, dog cognition expert and author of Inside of a Dog, “But if you haven’t had a dog before you might not know the popularity of these names.” The names seem to just occur to people as a fit for their new pet, but really they were already in the air as people yelled to get their Bellas or Maxes to come when called.
Wattenberg suggests that there might be another reason why these popular names just feel right for our pets. She refers to common pet names like Max, Lucy, Charlie, or Sam as “names you can hug”. She also points to another group, besides pets, who often get these names: childrens’ book characters.
The main characters in these books often have names that are simple, informal, and familiar, Wattenberg said. “They also have an old-fashioned style that feels suspended in time like a happy memory.” It makes perfect sense that we name our pets like this since like the characters in picture books, pets are like children who never grow up. Max could be inspired by the boy in Where the Wild Things Are, while Lucy could be from The Chronicles of Narnia, and so on.
For Pet Parents, It’s About How Well the Name Fits, Not How Unique It Is
Just because Max and Luna are now the most popular dog names for dogs doesn’t mean people won’t also meet a Penny, Freckles, Gizmo, Taylor, Archie, or Biggie. “Really, there are more unlike names than like names,” Horowitz said, reflecting on a survey about pet names she once did for her book Our Dogs, Ourselves, that got over 400 responses. A different survey of New York City dog breeds and names found that there are popular names within dog breeds: a small white dog like a Maltese or Bichon is likely to be named Snowball, a Beagle named Snoopy, a Husky named Lobo, or a Pug named Pugsley.
When naming a human, finding a unique name is more important than ever before. Wattenberg said that popular names fall out of fashion twice as fast as they did before social media. That’s not the case with dogs.
When we name our pets, we think about what seems like a good fit for them, not whether they’ll be one of many Mikes in their grade or how easy it’ll be to find their website someday. Humans eventually get older and leave home, but pets never grow up. Their place in the family is more important than an unusual name. Every dog is unique no matter how popular their name is.
At his last job, Conrady was one of four people named Chris–having people nearby with the same name isn’t a big deal. Luna might be popular but that doesn’t make her less of a Luna, Conrady said. “I couldn’t imagine calling her anything else.”
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