Joey ranks #113 with 946 entries and is one of the few pet names that openly carries a sitcom association without anyone treating it as a problem. The Friends connection is there for older owners, the everyman quality is there for everyone, and the name still works as a pure diminutive without any cultural reference at all. Joey absorbs all three readings.
The Friends generation, mostly grown
Friends ran from 1994 to 2004 and the streaming afterlife has kept the show in steady rotation since. Joey Tribbiani is the most warmly remembered character of the six, and pet owners who came of age during the original run sometimes pick the name for that reason. But the Friends layer is not load-bearing. Joey is a standard short form of Joseph and has been in steady American pet use for at least 70 years independent of any TV character.
The name does well across breeds without strong concentration. Mid-sized mixed breeds, smaller working dogs, and the warmer-tempered terriers all carry Joey comfortably. There is no breed signature the way Bella has with small companions, and the name appears across the full pet-names rankings without concentration.
Sound and recall
Two syllables, stress on the front (JOH-ee), with a hard J opener and a vowel-trailing tail. The hard J gives Joey decent park-distance performance. It is not as commanding as Max or Duke, but the consonant cluster is firm enough to carry across a yard. The diminutive -y softens the call without sacrificing the bite.
The kangaroo problem, sort of
Joey is also the standard term for a baby kangaroo, and a small but persistent subset of owners pick the name for that reason — usually for puppies of bouncy, hopping breeds. The reading is cute but rarely the dominant one. Most Joeys are Joeys because the name fits a friendly, unpretentious dog.
One counter-reading: Joey reads dated to some younger owners. The 1990s sitcom register can feel parental rather than personal, and owners under 30 sometimes pass on it for that reason. The human name page shows similar generational softness on the SSA side.