Murray ranks at #397 with 312 entries, leaning male. A Scottish surname-as-given-name (originally a place name meaning "settlement by the sea"), Murray reads as a warm, slightly grandfatherly choice — the kind of name owners pick when they want a dog that sounds like an actual person rather than a cute character.
The surname-as-pet-name register
Murray clusters with Cooper, Wallace, Finn, and Duncan in the Celtic-and-Scottish surname pet-naming cohort. These names share a friendly, sturdy register that has dominated millennial dog naming for the past decade — surnames borrowed as first names, often without much thought to their original origin.
The Mad About You layer
One pop-culture anchor: Murray was the dog on Mad About You (1992-1999), played by a Border Collie/Australian Shepherd mix named Maui. The show's run during the breed-led mid-1990s cemented Murray as a Border Collie name in the cultural memory. Owners of certain breeds often arrive at the name through this route without realizing it.
Sound and breed fit
The two-syllable shape (MUR-ee) has a soft front consonant and a singing trailing vowel, projection-friendly across distance. Murray lands disproportionately on medium dogs with friendly temperaments — Labradoodles, Goldendoodles, Border Collies, mixed breeds — where the warm grandfather-name tone matches the dog's approachable presence. The Murray baby name page shows declining SSA presence through the 20th century, which is exactly why it now reads charmingly retro.