Is Bowie a good pet name?

Bowie is a well-known pet name with 743 registered pets. Pets named Bowie are often described as Unique, Bold, Artistic.

Is Bowie a boy or girl pet name?

Bowie is more commonly given to male pets, though it can be used for any pet.

Bowie: Popular Pet Name — Meaning & Trends

Meaning & Story

Bowie is a Scottish surname derived from the Gaelic buidhe, meaning "yellow" or "fair-haired," used to describe someone with light coloring. It became a given name in the English-speaking world and carries an undeniable rock-and-roll association through David Bowie, the legendary musician who transformed it from a surname into a symbol of creative iconoclasm and fearless self-expression.

Bowie ranks #145 among America's most popular pet names, and it is one of the more intentional names on this list — owners who choose Bowie are usually paying tribute to David Bowie, the Ziggy Stardust-era icon who made the name synonymous with artistic brilliance and glittering individuality. It suits companions who seem to exist slightly outside the ordinary, the ones with startling eyes or an unusual coat pattern, the ones who do things their own way and look extraordinary doing it.

About the Pet Name Bowie

By Jack Lin·May 4, 2026·2 min read

Bowie ranks #145 with 743 entries and is one of the most tribute-driven pet names in the rankings. The name's pet-side rise tracks David Bowie's death in January 2016 with unusual cleanness. Owners who pick Bowie are almost always music fans, and the name functions as a continuing memorial to the artist in a way few pet names do.

The Bowie tribute effect

David Bowie died on January 10, 2016, two days after the release of his final album Blackstar. The cultural response was substantial, and pet owners who were Bowie fans began picking the name in elevated numbers throughout 2016 and the years following. The trajectory is one of the cleanest tribute-driven naming patterns in our data, comparable to Kobe after Kobe Bryant's death in 2020.

The musical reading dominates, but a small fraction of owners pick Bowie for the bowie knife (named after Jim Bowie, the 19th-century American frontiersman) or for the broader Western-American register. These owners tend to skew rural and pick the name for working-line dogs. The two reading communities — music-tribute and frontier-Americana — rarely overlap.

Breed and visual fit

The name is breed-flat with mild concentration on dogs whose visual register has some flair. Border Collies, Australian Shepherds (where the heterochromia or unusual eye color amplifies the Bowie reference, since the artist's eyes appeared mismatched), and the more striking mixed breeds all show elevated Bowie populations. The eye-color match for Australian Shepherds in particular is direct and intentional.

Sound and recall

Two syllables, stress on the front (BOH-ee), with a hard B opener and a vowel-trailing tail. Recall performance is moderate. The B opener has solid bite, but the trailing -ee is gentle and limits distance carry somewhat. The name works for typical pet use; high-stakes recall on working breeds is borderline.

One counter-reading

The Bowie reference is generationally specific — owners under 25 may not have a strong personal connection to David Bowie's catalog, and the name's cultural weight is fading for younger owners. The human name page shows Bowie has climbed on the SSA baby chart in parallel with the pet rise, also driven by the same tribute pattern after 2016.