Dill is an herb: feathery, aromatic, used in pickling and Scandinavian cooking. It belongs to the herb-as-pet-name category alongside Basil, Sage, and Thyme. On a male dog, it's a cottagecore-adjacent choice that reads as quirky without trying too hard.
The Herb Naming Tradition
Herb names for pets have been part of a broader botanical naming wave that accelerated through the 2010s. Basil became fashionable partly through the Fawlty Towers association; Sage gained traction as a gender-neutral human name that crossed into pet use. Dill is more specific: it skips the roundness of Basil and the spiritual connotations of Sage for something pickled and pleasantly weird.
The Dill Pickles Connection
There's also the Rugrats character Dil Pickles, spelled differently but pronounced identically — who was Baby Dil in the animated series. That 1991-2004 cartoon defined a generation of children's television, and anyone who grew up with it will catch the reference even if it wasn't intentional.
The Counter-Reading: Too Niche for General Use
Dill is a name that works perfectly for a specific kind of owner — someone who gardens, cooks, or appreciates the cottagecore-botanical aesthetic. For everyone else it may read as randomly culinary. At 40 registrations, this is firmly niche territory, and that specificity is exactly what makes it appealing to the owners who choose it.