Mabel ranks at #210 with 511 entries, and the name closes out the recovering-vintage cluster on this batch in style. Mabel was a top-30 SSA girls' name in the 1880s-1890s, vanished for almost a century, and has come back through both pet adoption and (more slowly) baby naming in the past 15 years.
The deepest-vintage recovery
Mabel sits with Mae, Pearl, and Ruby in the Edwardian-recovery cluster — names that hit their American peak before 1920. These are deeper-vintage picks than the 1940s cluster (Bonnie, Betty) and tend to attract slightly different owners: usually millennials and younger Gen X who want their pet's name to feel intentionally retro rather than family-handed-down.
One counter-reading: Mabel from Gravity Falls (Disney Channel, 2012-2016) is a real cultural anchor for younger adopters. The character — bright, weird, sweater-loving — produced a real Mabel cohort among owners who watched the show in their teens and are now adopting in their mid-20s. Those Mabels tend to be small, slightly off-beat dogs and cats rather than serious-coded breeds.
Where the name lands by breed
Cavaliers, Cocker Spaniels, Cavapoos, small mixed breeds, and senior cats over-index on Mabel. The two-syllable shape (MAY-bul) reads warmly and recalls cleanly across distance, which makes it functional as well as nostalgic. The Mabel baby name page shows the human chart, where the name has slowly climbed back into the SSA top-500 over the past decade. Pet adoption is leading the cultural recovery curve as is typical for the deepest-vintage cluster, and the current pet leaderboard rank suggests the name's slow return to broader visibility will continue.