Nova ranks #141 with 756 entries and is one of the cleanest examples of the celestial-feminine pet naming wave. The name reads as bright, modern, and slightly sci-fi. Owners pick Nova for dogs and cats whose personality has spark, and the astronomical meaning (a star that suddenly increases in brightness) does the work even when owners have not consciously thought about the etymology.
The celestial cluster
Nova belongs to a fast-growing pocket of celestial-themed female pet names: Luna, Stella, Nova, Astra, and Cosmo's female counterparts. These names share a slightly otherworldly register and have all climbed in parallel since roughly 2015. The aesthetic is part cottagecore, part astrology revival, part general modern-feminine soft-but-confident — and it is one of the dominant feminine pet-naming registers of the past decade.
The breed distribution skews toward darker-coated and silvery-coated breeds where the visual reference to a bright star against night sky lands. Black Labs, Huskies (where the silver-and-blue combination amplifies the celestial reading), Border Collies, and gray cats all show meaningful Nova populations.
Sound and recall
Two syllables, stress on the front (NOH-vah), with a hard N opener and a vowel-trailing tail. Recall performance is good. The N opener has decent bite, the V in the middle gives structural integrity, and the trailing -ah is recognizable across moderate distance. The name does not have the punch of single-syllable hard-consonant alternatives, but it carries enough for typical recall use cases.
The car-name problem
Chevrolet sold a model called Nova from 1962 through the 1980s, and that brand association is the main thing keeping older owners from picking the name. For owners under 40, the Chevy Nova reading is essentially absent, and the name reads as cleanly celestial. The generational divide on this name is sharper than on most.
One counter-reading
Nova has climbed sharply on the SSA baby chart over the past five years, and the human name page shows the trajectory. The crossover saturation is reaching a point where pet owners regularly meet child Novas. If you want the celestial register but want something less crowded, Astra and Vega are still uncommon. You can browse the broader cluster at pet-names.