Kelly ranks at #639 with 193 entries, registered female on this chart. The name is an Irish surname (from Ó Ceallaigh, descendant of Ceallach) that became a strong American given name through the 20th century, and on a pet registry it lands as a slightly-vintage-but-still-warm feminine pick.
The Irish-American household register
Kelly carries a noticeable Irish-American family register, with the naming concentrated in households where Irish heritage is part of the cultural fabric. Pet Kelly often signals the same generational naming wave that produced Riley, Finn, and Murphy on more recent dogs, but with a slightly older anchor. The name is one step warmer than Murphy and one step more feminine than Riley.
The 1980s-naming-cohort effect
Kelly was a major American girls' name through the 1970s and 1980s on SSA charts before declining steadily into the 2000s. The cohort of women who grew up surrounded by Kelly classmates is now adopting dogs, and a slice of them reach for Kelly on the pet specifically because the name reads as familiar from their own school days without competing with current human-naming charts.
Sound and breed lean
Two syllables, front-stressed (KEL-ee), with a hard opening consonant and clean recall. The name carries reliably outside. It lands across a wide breed range without strong concentration: Golden Retrievers, Labradors, Beagles, and friendly mixed-breed rescues. The human Kelly page shows strong 1970s-1980s SSA peaks and a long decline.