Daphne ranks #418 with 297 entries, registered female. The name comes from Greek daphne (laurel), tied to the myth of the nymph who turned into a laurel tree to escape Apollo. The name's modern American adoption sits at an interesting cross-section of Scooby-Doo, Frasier, and Bridgerton.
Three pop-culture anchors
Daphne Blake from Scooby-Doo (1969-onward) gave the name its first wave of mainstream American recognition. Daphne Moon on Frasier (1993-2004) added a different register — British, slightly ditzy, warm. Bridgerton's Daphne Bridgerton (2020-onward) pulled the name into period-drama territory for a younger audience. Each generation of owner reaches the name through a different door, but they all end up at the same call.
Sound fit and breed lean
Two syllables (DAF-nee), front-stressed, with a soft fricative middle that gives the name a slightly delicate finish. The name lands well on elegant, refined breeds — Cavaliers, Borzois, Standard Poodles, Greyhounds, and long-coated mixes. There is also a meaningful cat cluster, particularly tortoiseshells and refined longhairs.
The vintage-revival reading
Daphne sits in the same revival cluster as Eloise, Beatrice, and Hazel — old human names that millennial owners have rescued from semi-retirement and applied to pets with a knowing wink. The owner cluster skews design-aware and slightly Anglophilic. The human Daphne page shows the name climbing meaningfully on the SSA chart through the 2010s and 2020s, mirroring the pet-naming pattern almost exactly.