Channel almost certainly entered the pet registry as a misspelling of Chanel — the French fashion house, and before that the given name of Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel. At 40 registrations, rank 2334, it's a paperwork artifact: owners who wanted Chanel but spelled it phonetically and it was recorded as written.
The Chanel Connection
Pet owners naming female dogs after Coco Chanel are participating in a luxury-fashion pet naming tradition alongside Gucci, Versace, and Prada. It's a specific owner-type signal: someone who associates the name with elegance and brand recognition rather than spelling conventions. The -el ending also sounds softer than Channel's -el, which has a slightly harder American English pronunciation.
Sound Fit
Channel has a clean two-syllable sound that actually works fine as a pet name regardless of the spelling question. The sh- onset and -nel ending flow naturally when called across a dog park. Whether the intent was Chanel or Channel doesn't change the daily acoustic experience.
The Counter-Reading: Artifact as Feature
Channel is an instructive example of how pet registry data captures intent imperfectly. The name isn't wrong — it works, it sounds good, it's memorable. But anyone analyzing this data should treat Channel and Chanel as essentially the same name counting toward the same trend.