Atticus ranks at #495 with 245 entries, leaning male. The cultural anchor is unambiguous — Atticus Finch from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), with Gregory Peck's 1962 film performance cementing the visual register. The pet version of the name is almost entirely the literary lineage.
The literary-character cohort
Atticus clusters with Gatsby, Holden, and Huck in the literary-male-protagonist pet-naming family. Owners reaching for these names are usually engaging with reader-household signaling — the dog or cat ends up named for a moral hero from American literature. The naming pattern almost always involves intentional bookishness.
The Greco-Roman lineage
The name itself is older than the novel — Atticus is Latin for "of Attica" (the region around Athens), and the name circulated in Roman antiquity. A small subset of owners come to the name through this older lineage, especially in classics-leaning households. The Atticus baby name page shows the SSA chart climbing through the 2010s.
Sound and breed lean
The three-syllable shape (AT-ih-kus) is on the longer side for a working call name. Atticus lands on medium-to-large dogs with calm, dignified temperaments — Labradors, Golden Retrievers, Bernese Mountain Dogs, and sturdy mixed-breed rescues. Owners universally fall back on Atti or Tic as the daily nickname; the long form is for paperwork and the short form is for the dog park.
The Go Set a Watchman complication
Harper Lee's posthumously published 2015 novel Go Set a Watchman complicated the moral simplicity of the original Atticus Finch character, presenting an older, less heroic version. Most pet-naming Atticus owners filter that out and stay with the 1960 version, which is the cleaner anchor.