Mufasa: The Lion King opens December 20. Tickets went on pre-sale in mid-November. The marketing campaign is in full motion. The film is a prequel — it tells the story of how Mufasa rose to be king, before the events of the 1994 original. James Earl Jones, who voiced the original Mufasa for 30 years and died on September 9, will not appear in the prequel. The new Mufasa is voiced by Aaron Pierre. The film will be a major commercial release, will be heavily watched, will probably be reviewed favorably. It will also, quietly, alter the meaning of every pet currently named Mufasa in the United States. The owners did not sign up for that.
Pet naming after fictional characters depends on the character staying still
When a pet owner names a dog Mufasa, they are committing the dog to a specific cultural reference. The reference, until November 2024, was unambiguous: Mufasa was a wise adult king, voiced by James Earl Jones, who died nobly to save his son in the 1994 film. The name carried a specific bundle of meanings — gravitas, paternal sacrifice, dignified leadership, the particular voice that delivered "Remember who you are." Owners chose the name with this bundle in mind. The bundle was stable.
Prequels destabilize the bundle. The 2024 prequel introduces a young Mufasa — orphaned, separated from his family, navigating his own backstory. The character is no longer the wise adult king at the center of the story. He is, for two hours, a vulnerable cub. The cultural reference attached to the name now contains both versions: the wise adult king and the orphaned cub. Pet owners who named their dogs Mufasa in 2018 or 2020 cannot opt out of the prequel layer. The layer is added to their dog's name regardless of whether they wanted it.
This is structurally different from naming after a real person
When you name a pet after a real person, the person continues to live their life and add to the cultural reference pool the name carries. A dog named Beyoncé in 2011 has had thirteen additional years of Beyoncé adding to what the name means. Some of those additions have been welcome to the owner; some have been irrelevant. The pet remains the pet, and the cultural drift around the name is something the owner mostly observes rather than participates in.
Naming after a fictional character is different. The fictional character is, in principle, fixed at the moment of the original work. Mufasa, in 1994, was the Mufasa of the 1994 film. The character did not have additional adventures, did not say new things, did not die a second time in a sequel. The name, in this sense, was meant to be more stable than a real-person name. Disney's prequel breaks that stability. The character has, retroactively, acquired a backstory that the name now carries. This is a cultural rewrite of a name that millions of pet owners thought they were locking in.
The Mufasa frequency in pet data
NamesPop's pet name data shows Mufasa appearing across NYC and Seattle pet licensing records in modest but consistent numbers since the late 1990s. The name is concentrated in larger dog breeds — golden retrievers, German shepherds, large mixed-breed dogs, the occasional pointer. The naming pattern is consistent with what one would expect: owners chose the name for dogs whose physical presence echoed the regal aspect of the original character. The 2019 photorealistic remake produced a small uptick in the data, with the name appearing on slightly younger dogs than before.
The 2024 prequel will produce another uptick. The marketing of the film is using the cub-Mufasa imagery prominently, which means the new Mufasas will not necessarily be large dogs at all. Owners may name a small puppy Mufasa with the cub framing in mind rather than the king framing. This is a real shift in what the name signals. The Mufasa name pool, after this film, will contain both kinds of dogs — the regal large breeds named under the original framing, and the new puppies named under the prequel framing. The same name will mean different things to different owners.
Disney's machine and the naming layer
Disney has been quietly running a culture-rewriting operation for decades, and the naming layer is one of its less-noticed downstream effects. Every time Disney produces a sequel, prequel, or live-action remake of an original animation, the names attached to those originals get culturally re-edited. Cinderella in 1950 is not the same Cinderella as the live-action 2015 Cinderella. The name carries both, and the pet owner who named her cat Cinderella in 1998 does not get to choose which of those is the dominant reference. Disney does. The owner inherits whatever Disney has done since.
This is, in some sense, a feature of working with characters who belong to a corporate IP rather than to the public domain. Public-domain characters — Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, the various Greek mythological figures — are interpreted by many makers, but the original sources remain available and the references are not consolidated under a single rights-holder. IP-owned characters get consolidated under the corporate decisions of their owner. Pet owners who name their pets after IP-owned characters are accepting that the name will continue to be edited by the owner, even after the pet is named. This is the implicit licensing agreement of the practice.
What the pet's name actually carries
The dog does not know its name has gone through a cultural rewrite. The dog responds to the sound. The owner is the one who carries the cultural reference, and the cultural reference is the part that has shifted. A 2018 Mufasa, going for walks in 2024, is a regal seven-year-old dog. The owner takes him to the dog park, calls his name, gets the same response, sees the same face. The cultural drift happens silently in the owner's awareness. The dog is unaffected by it.
This is the small saving grace of pet naming. The pet does not metabolize its name's cultural meaning. The owner does. When the meaning shifts, the owner adjusts, and the dog goes on being itself. This is part of why pet naming is a more permissive cultural site than human naming — the carrier of the name is not vulnerable to the cultural drift in the way a human child carrier would be. The owner can change their mind about what the name means and the dog will not notice.
The 1994 generation of Mufasas
The dogs named Mufasa in the few years after the 1994 film are mostly gone now. Dogs live, on average, about twelve years. The 1994-1996 cohort of Mufasas is no longer with us. The current pool of living Mufasas is concentrated in dogs born in the 2010s and 2020s, with the 2019 remake providing a noticeable bump. The current pool will encounter the prequel as their cultural reference layer rather than as a flashback. They are mostly young adult dogs, and the prequel will be the first significant Disney-led re-edit of their name during their lifetime.
The owners of these dogs will, mostly, watch the prequel. They will form opinions about whether Aaron Pierre's voice work meets the cultural memory the name carried. They will, in some cases, find that the prequel deepens their affection for the name. They will, in other cases, find that the prequel dilutes the name's original gravitas. The mix of reactions will not produce a uniform shift in the pet-naming pool. It will produce a more diverse Mufasa pool, with different owners holding different relationships to the same name.
Simba, by way of comparison
Simba has had a more eventful pet-naming career than Mufasa. The name has been a stable mid-tier pet name since the 1994 original, with refreshes in 1998 (the Simba's Pride direct-to-video sequel), 2019 (the photorealistic remake), and now 2024 (the prequel, which prominently features a young Simba in a supporting role). The Simba pool is larger and more diverse than the Mufasa pool. The cultural reference has been re-edited multiple times. Simba pet owners are more accustomed to the rewrite cycle than Mufasa owners.
This suggests something useful about how the prequel will land. Owners of pets named Simba will treat the prequel as another data point in an already-multi-version cultural reference. Owners of pets named Mufasa will treat it as a more disruptive event, because their name has had less practice with rewrites. The disruption will be larger for the smaller, more-canonical name pool. Simba is in the rewrite cycle. Mufasa is being inducted into it.
What this means for naming after fiction generally
The Mufasa case is a useful illustration of a broader truth about naming pets after fictional characters. The names are not as stable as the owner thinks they are at the moment of naming. The cultural reference can be edited later, often by parties the owner does not directly negotiate with. The owner is signing up for an open-ended relationship with whoever controls the IP. For Disney IP, that relationship is going to involve recurring rewrites, because Disney's commercial model depends on continuing to extract value from existing IP. The pet name is part of the ecosystem the IP is being extracted into.
This is not a reason to avoid naming a pet after a fictional character. It is a reason to choose the character with care. Characters whose original work is the only canonical version are stabler than characters in active franchise development. Public-domain characters are stabler than IP-owned characters. The most stable pet names attached to fictional sources are names from books that are out of copyright and have not been adapted recently. The least stable are names from active Disney IP, which is most of what mainstream American pet owners are reaching for. The trade-off is real, and it is worth understanding before the next prequel is announced.
Data source: NYC Dog Licensing Dataset + Seattle Pet Licenses. Analysis by NamesPop.
Found this helpful?
Share it with someone who’s picking a name.