Critter Alley

Critter Alley

Thursday, October 1, 2009

What's In a Name?



Names, anyone?

The St. Louis Post Dispatch did a story on pet names today. I looked at their website edition and found a handy dandy tool that tracks names registered for pet licenses in this area between 2001 and 2007. The database contains about 150,000 names.

The cool part of this tool is that you can look up the top names, total names, or enter your own pet's name to see where it ranks in the metro area.

For example, I found the top 5 dog names to be: Max, Bailey, Buddy, Maggie, and Molly.

The top 5 cat names were Tiger, Tigger, Smokey, Kitty, and Max.

My critter names didn't even make the top 100. Indy came in at 359th, while Bogey's name fell even lower at 560th. Hey, don't worry, fur kids, that makes you even more "special" than you've already proven to be!

Have fun checking out your pet's name.

And by the way, this just might help you find the perfect moniker for that critter character in your next story!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a fun and fascinating resource! Barkley came in at 105th. Our new baby is apparently named Floyd and he comes in at 136th.

Pat Wahler said...

Linda! Tell more, please! Do you have a new baby at your house?

BECKY said...

I'm not surprised my beloved Tiger came in first for cat names...the only problem is...she's a DOG, and she's a SHE!

Donna Volkenannt said...

Thanks, Pat.
This is a fascinating list. Our dog Harley came in at 31. I love some of the "sweet" names--cookie, hershey, snickers, brownie, mocha, tootsie.
Donna