The popularity of cat names differs by nation, even in nations with the same language. The ranking of the most popular cat names can be assessed, in particular, from pet insurance registrations, microchip registrations, and breed registries.
In the English language
Adrian Franklin, senior lecturer of the School of Sociology and Social Work at the
University of Tasmania
The University of Tasmania (UTAS) is a public research university, primarily located in Tasmania, Australia. Founded in 1890, it is Australia's fourth oldest university. Christ College (University of Tasmania), Christ College, one of the unive ...
and author of ''Animals and Modern Cultures'', told the ''
Sunday Tasmanian'' in 2001: "In the 1950s and '60s dogs and cats were given '
dog' and '
cat
The cat (''Felis catus'') is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from the wild members of ...
' names.
..Cats had names like 'Blackie' and 'Spotty', names that illustrated their physical appearance. The 1980s marked a turning point, with the 10 most popular dog names all being compatible as human names, but in the '90s this progressed even further. People are now giving animals the same names as contemporary names given to babies." He believed that as people have fewer children or no children at all, pets become more important in their lives.
In Australia, the United Kingdom
[Poole, Shona Crawford, "Down Henry! Time to call this trend to heel – Pet names", ''The Times'', London, May 16, 1998, retrieved via NewsBank.com on May 19, 2010,] and in the United States, news accounts have noted that the same popular baby names were also being given to pets. The new names for dogs more closely echoed human baby names, said Lindsey Basserabie, a company official, but the trend occurred for both pet species. "In fact, this year's list of top 10 dog and cat names could nearly be straight from the birth pages."
[ In the United States, according to an article in ''The Tampa Tribune'', some of the most popular cat names also appeared on the Social Security Administration's list of most common baby names: "Isabella (Bella) is No. 4 for girls, and Sophia ranks ninth on both the Social Security and pet lists."][Levine, Kristin, "Dog, Cat Names Taken To The Max", ''The Tampa Tribune'', January 26, 2008, retrieved from the NewsBank.com website on May 19, 2010]
Australia
According to "Bow Wow Meow", an Australian company that provides pet tags to pet stores and veterinarians, the 10 most popular cat names its Australian customers chose, as of 2010, are:
In 2006, a survey of 270,000 Nestle Purina PetCare customers in Australia came up with these most popular cat names:
# Tiger
# Puss
# Smokey
# Misty
# Tigger
# Kitty
# Oscar
# Missy
# Max
# Ginger
United Kingdom
Historically, the cat-specific names "Tibbles" or "Tibby" were common, and are still occasionally used. These were derived from the character of Tybalt or Tibert in the Reynard the Fox
Reynard the Fox is a literary cycle of medieval allegorical Dutch, English, French and German fables. The first extant versions of the cycle date from the second half of the 12th century. The genre was popular throughout the Late Middle Ages, a ...
folk tale cycle,[Brown (1985) ''The Baby Name Book'', Greenwich, p.536] and ultimately from the Germanic name Theobald Theobald is a Germanic dithematic name, composed from the elements '' theod-'' "people" and ''bald'' "bold". The name arrived in England with the Normans.
The name occurs in many spelling variations, including Theudebald, Diepold, Theobalt, Tyb ...
, derived from '' theod-'' "people" and ''bald'' "bold".[Room (1993) ''The naming of animals: an appellative reference to domestic, work, and show animals, real and fictional'', McFarland, p.14] The name was applied to cats as they were popularly thought to be daring and curious.[ The old cat name "Gib", a contraction of the name "Gilbert", was also thought to have arisen through the latter being used as a 'translation' of the ]French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
"Tibert".[Nares, R. (1867) ''A Glossary; Or, Collection of Words, Phrases, Names, and Allusions Customs, Proverbs, Etc., Which Have Been Thought to Require Illustration, in the Works of English Authors, Particularly Shakespeare and His Contemporaries'', J R Smith, p.360] However the similar-sounding name "Tiddles", given in England to both male and female cats, was instead derived from a dialect verb ''tiddle'', "to pet or stroke".[
"Tabby", another traditional cat name, was originally used for any striped cat][Hadlock and Stimson, "Traditional Cat Names", in ''Journal of American Folk-lore'', Vol 59 (1945), 529] but later led to the widespread use of the etymologically unrelated name "Tabitha" for female cats. The cat name "Thomas" or "Tom", as well as the generic term "tomcat", appears to have been originated and popularized by an anonymous work (sometimes attributed to Fielding, although most likely by William Guthrie) first printed in 1760, ''The Life and Adventures of a Cat'', whose hero is called "Tom the Cat"; before this time male cats were generally called "ram-cats" or "gib-cats" rather than "tomcats".[Room (1993), p.18]['' Notes and Queries'', 7th series, V, May 5th, 1888, 350]
Scottish cat names included "Baudrons" or "Baudrans", an affectionate term equivalent to "puss".[Wright, J. (1898) ''The English dialect dictionary'', v1, Frowde, p.191] The word appears to be related to the dialect term ''bawd'' used for the European hare, much as the dialect names "puss", "furze
''Ulex'' (commonly known as gorse, furze, or whin) is a genus of flowering plants in the family Fabaceae. The genus comprises about 20 species of thorny evergreen shrubs in the subfamily Faboideae of the pea family Fabaceae. The species are na ...
cat" and "mawkin" were also recorded for the hare.[''Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society: Literary and Historical Section'', v31 (1932), 361] In Wales, "titw" was used as a similar affectionate term for cats.[Pughe, W. Owen (ed.) (1832) ''A Dictionary of the Welsh Language'', v2, Williams, p.545]
By the mid-1980s, surveys indicated that the most popular names in the UK were largely genderless and based on colour, with few personal names, although "Tabitha" remained popular and "Sam" was the most popular name for male cats.[Room (1993), p.7]
In 2006, Direct Line, a pet insurance company, compiled a list of the most popular cat names chosen by its customers. The company's list of popular cat names "overlaps heavily with the same year's 100 most popular children's names in England and Wales", according to Melissa Lafsky, writing in the "Freakonomics" blog at the ''New York Times'' website:[
]
United States
According 2005–2006 statistics from the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association 34 percent of United States households own at least one cat, an estimated 90 million cats in total.
The United States' largest pet insurer, Veterinary Pet Insurance (VPI), releases annual rankings of its customers' most popular cat names and dog names. The 2010 list (based on information from 2009 and released in January 2010) was gathered from 475,000 policies. Curtis Steinhoff, senior director of corporate communications for VPI, attributed the popularity of "Bella" (No. 3 on the cat list but No. 1 for dogs) on the 2010 list as probably having "something to do with Bella being the name of the heroine in a certain vampire book/film series that's pretty popular these days." In 2012, VPI (collected from information from 2011) listed the top 5 female cat names as Bella, Lucy, Kitty, Chloe and Sophie. The top 5 male cat names were Max, Oliver, Charlie, Tiger and Smokey.
In 2017, Find Cat Names compiled results from 2.2 million cat owners to find the most commonly chosen cat names from its search engine. It listed the top 5 female cat names as Nala, Bell, Luna, Abby, and Daisy. The top 5 male cat names were Simba, Milo, Tiger, Oreo, and Bear.
In 2009, the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' reported that according to government databases, the three most popular cat names in that city were, in order, Kitty, Tiger and Max. In 2004, the same newspaper reported differently based on information from the Cook County Department of Animal Control. The ''Sun-Times'' reported in 1987 that the same Cook County department had checked its database of 27,863 cats that had been vaccinated from 1984 through 1986 and found yet different results.
Finally, a Gallup poll of 1,242 Americans was completed in 1990. The results of all of the above polls are summarized in the table below:
In other languages
Germany
In Germany, "'exotic English and other non-German names are popular with German pet owners", according to an article in the About.com website. Typical, clichéd names for cats in Germany include that language's equivalent for "kitty", ''Mieze'' or ''Miezekatze'' ("pussycat"). ''Muschi'' was also quite common and carries the same meanings as "pussy" in English, which led to its sharp decline as a popular name in the last 20 years up to 2010.[Web page title]
"German Dog and Cat Names/Part 2: Katzen und Katzenkrimis"
About.com website, retrieved May 15, 2010,
According to another About.com article, one German list of popular cat names in that country gave these rankings:[
# Felix
# Minka
# Moritz
# Charly
# Tiger (tee-gher)
# Eve
# Susi
# Lisa
# Blacky
# Muschi
In 2006, according to an article in ''The Guardian,'' the three most popular cat names in Germany were Felix, Gismo and Charlie.
]
Italy
According to a survey on 3000 cats by the website Amoremiao, the 10 most popular cat names in Italy are:
# Romeo
# Pallina (Small ball)
# Micio (Pussycat)
# Luna (Moon)
# Chicco (Grain)
# Birba (Scoundrel)
# Trilly
# Leo
# Minù
# Briciola (Crumb)
The popularity of Romeo and Minù is related with the names of two main characters of Disney movie Aristocats ( Aristogatti Italian version).
South Korea
In South Korea, the most common name for a cat of either gender is Nabi which translates to "Butterfly" in English. This name is even used for cats in Korean cartoons such as ''There She Is!!
''There She Is!!'' (Korean: 떳다 그녀!!) (also known as ''Tteot-ta geu-nyeo'' or ''Tteotta'' or ''Ddautta'') is a South Korean Flash cartoon series produced by a three-person team and hosted on the Korean website SamBakZa. The cartoons becam ...
''. Other very popular names include:
# No-rang-i (노랑이, meaning Goldie or Yellow-)
# Ya-ong-i (야옹이, meaning Meowie)
Quebec (Canada)
According to a survey by the website Veterinet, the 10 most popular cat names in Quebec are:
# Minou
# Grisou
# Ti-Mine
# Félix
# Caramel
# Mimi
# Pacha
# Charlotte
# Minette
# Chanel
Veterinet found that nine out of the ten names are the same as 15 years ago, but in a different order. They also discovered that the 25 most popular cat names in Quebec sound French.
China
Mimi (咪咪) is the generic name for a cat in China. It is onomatopoeic, coming from the cat's meow, and is also used to call cats.Tangyuan (food)
Tangyuan () is a traditional Chinese dessert made of glutinous rice shaped into a ball that is served in a hot broth or syrup. They come in varying sizes, anything between a marble to a ping pong ball, and are sometimes stuffed with filling. T ...
)
# 花卷 (Huajuan, Mandarin roll
Mandarin rolls, Steamed Mandarin rolls, Flower Buns, or Huā juǎn () are a kind of steamed bun originating from China. The rolls are cooked by steaming. It is another one of the staples of Chinese cuisine, which is similar to white bread in wes ...
)
# 球球 (Qiuqiu, balls)
# 豆豆 (Doudou, beans)
# 乖乖 (Guaiguai, well behaved)
# 跳跳 (Tiaotiao, jump)
# 蛋黄 (Danhuang, yolk)
# 橘子 (Juzi, mandarin)
Japan
A survey of 1694 cats conducted by Japanese pet website Iris Pet found that the most popular cat names in Japan are:
# Kariri
# Momo (Peach)
# Kuro (Black)
# Hana (Flower)
# Koko (Here)
# Shiro (White)
# Sora (Sky)
# Fuku (Lucky)
# Mei
# Kai (Seashell)
# Chiro
# Chibi (Tiny)
# Mikan (Mandarin Orange)
# Kotetsu (Small Iron)
# Sakura (Cherry Blossom)
# Tora (Tiger)
# Maron (Chestnut)
# Rin (Graceful)
# Azuki (Sweet Red Beans)
# Jiji
# Hime (Princess)
# Maru (Circle)
# Tama (Pearl or Marble)
# Moka (Mocha)
# Leo
# Kinako
# Kurumi (Walnut)
# Chobi
# Haru (Spring)
# Miruku (Milk)
# Minto (Mint)
# Yuki (Snow)
Cultural references to the naming of cats
Cat names were the subject of T. S. Eliot's fanciful, well-known poem "The Naming of Cats
"The Naming of Cats" is a poem in T. S. Eliot's 1939 poetry book ''Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats''. It was adapted into a musical number in Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1981 musical ''Cats'', and has also been quoted in other films, notably ''Logan' ...
", written in the 1930s and first published in ''Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
''Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'' (1939) is a collection of whimsical light poems by T. S. Eliot about feline psychology and sociology, published by Faber and Faber. It serves as the basis for Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1981 musical ''Cats'' ...
'' in 1939. The book was adapted into the musical ''Cats'', which includes a song about the naming of cats.
References
Further reading
*Ed. Borgna Brunner, "Most Popular Dog and Cat Names, 2005," TIME Almanac 2007 with Information Please (Boston: Pearson education, 2006), p. 141.
{{DEFAULTSORT:List Of Most Popular Cat Names
Cats as pets