This page explains how a raw pet record becomes a ranked name on catdognames.
1. Cleaning
We drop entries that are not names, such as "Unknown", "No name", shelter codes and numbers. Spellings that differ only by accents or case are merged: Chloé and Chloe count as one name, and the most common spelling is shown.
2. Duplicates
Within each source we remove repeat records of the same pet, for example a dog that is licensed again every year. Depending on the source we use the license number, the shelter's animal ID, or a combination of name, breed, sex and birth year.
3. Ranking
Sources differ a lot in size. To stop one large city from deciding the list, a name's rank uses its average share across sources, weighted by the square root of each source's size. Shelter sources count half. Names seen in more sources get a small boost. "About 1 in N dogs" on the site is this weighted share.
4. Girl, boy or unisex
A name is a girl or boy name when at least 5 pets with that name have a recorded sex and at least 75% of them are female or male. Otherwise it is unisex. Most cat records do not include sex, so many cat names are unisex.
5. What gets a page
A name appears in lists when it is found in at least two sources or at least three records. It gets its own page from 25 records. Breed pages need 300 records and 10 names; year pages need 5,000 records in that year.
6. Years and trends
Year means birth year, and only sources that record it are used (New York City, Austin and Cambridge). License, renewal and shelter dates are left out because they say when a pet was registered, not when it was named. For each year we take a name's share within each source and combine the sources with the same weighting as the ranking, so a city publishing more or fewer records in a year does not look like a trend.
A name is rising or falling when its average share in the last two years differs from the three years before by at least 20%. Young pets are often licensed later, so a year is only used once it has 5,000 records. Few cat records include a birth year, so we don't show cat trends or cat year lists.
7. Styles
Style lists such as Food, Nature or Mythology come from word lists and reference data. Cute and Funny labels are suggested by a language model running on our own server, and we correct labels by hand when needed.
8. Sources
All figures come from open data that public bodies publish. We keep only the pet name, species, sex, breed and year from each source.
| Source | Pets | Records used | Dates | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NYC Dog Licensing Dataset | Dogs | 630,115 | 2014–2025 | NYC Open Data (no license stated; counts only) |
| Seattle Pet Licenses | Cats and dogs | 35,673 | 2015–2026 | Public domain |
| Austin Animal Center Outcomes | Cats and dogs (shelter) | 97,395 | 2013–2025 | Public domain |
| Dogs of Cambridge (MA) | Dogs | 11,672 | 2018–2026 | ODC Public Domain Dedication (PDDL) |
| Allegheny County Dog Licenses | Dogs | 88,872 | 2022–2025 | CC0 |
| City of Vancouver Animal Control Inventory | Mostly dogs (shelter) | 20,618 | 1998–2026 | Open Government Licence – Vancouver |
| Toronto Licensed Dog and Cat Names | Cats and dogs (top 200 per year) | 2,795 | 2020–2026 | Open Government Licence – Toronto |
- Licensing records cover pets whose owners registered them, so they lean towards dogs and towards cities that require licenses.
- Shelter records describe animals that passed through a shelter; we give them half the weight of licensing records when ranking.
- Toronto publishes only the most common names each year, so it adds to popular names but not to rare ones.
- Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Toronto and the Open Government Licence – Vancouver.
If you run a dataset we could add, or spot a problem with ours, please contact us.
Last updated November 14, 2026