Napoleon ranks #559 with 223 entries, registered male. The name carries unmistakable historical weight — Napoleon Bonaparte, the French emperor (1769-1821). As a pet name it is almost always being given to a small dog with deliberate ironic intent, leaning into the "Napoleon complex" register where small size meets large personality.
The size-mismatch joke register
Napoleon clusters with Tiny, Tank, Titan, Maximus, and Hercules when applied to small dogs in the deliberately-mismatched pet-naming cohort. Owners reaching for Napoleon for a Chihuahua are doing the same comedic move as owners naming their Great Dane Tiny — the mismatch is the entire point.
Breed lean
Napoleon lands disproportionately on small, assertive breeds — Chihuahuas, Dachshunds, Jack Russell Terriers, Pomeranians, and small terrier mixes with large-personality energy. The size-and-name mismatch is unusually consistent.
The Napoleon Dynamite counter-reading
A real cohort of millennial owners reach the name through the 2004 indie comedy Napoleon Dynamite, picking the name with explicit film reference. The reading flips the register from emperor-irony to awkward-teen-irony but lands on the same self-aware naming pattern. The Napoleon baby name page shows minimal recent SSA presence, leaving the pet version as the primary current use.
Owners reaching for Napoleon often have a sibling pet given a complementary historical-mismatch name, like Caesar on a Pug or Cleopatra on a tabby. The naming aesthetic carries through the household. The name's pet-only register is unusual among historically-weighty picks; most owners would never name a baby Napoleon, but they will absolutely name a Pomeranian Napoleon, which says something about how seriously pet names are taken.