Browse our opinion articles on pet names.
The first joint legal artifact a couple produces over a pet is not the pet-nup. It is the name. The name is where the negotiation lives, where the compromise lives, and where the eventual custody fight is rehearsed.
Purebreds get Winston and Beatrice. Mutts get Buddy and Mister. The naming gap is a cousin of the adoption gap — and we cannot empty the shelters until we close it.
Three weeks after his ten-year-old French bulldog passed, Snoop introduced a new puppy named Baby Boy. The name reveals a pattern most multi-pet households quietly follow — and which the NYC license data confirms.
Lady. Tramp. Jock. Trusty. Peg. Bull. Dachsie. The naming palette of the 1955 film reads like a vanished dialect. Modern pet names optimize for cute. Mid-century names optimized for character.
Labubu fever isn't just a Pop Mart phenomenon. In NYC and Seattle pet registration data, names like Goblin, Gremlin, Mochi, and Dumpling are climbing fast. The aesthetic shift is real, and it has a name: ugly-cute.