Princess is the only top-20 pet name that's also a common noun — and the data is unambiguous about who owns it. With 2,933 entries at rank #17, she's the most overtly aspirational name in the entire top 50. Owners pick Princess to declare a relationship, not to describe a personality. The dog or cat is being announced as royalty within the household, full stop.
The small-dog throne
Princess concentrates heavily on toy and small breeds in our combined NYC and Seattle data. She ranks in the top 10 among Chihuahuas, Yorkshire Terriers, and Maltese, and barely registers on Labradors or German Shepherds. The pattern is the same one that drives Bella's small-breed dominance, but Princess takes it further. Owners of large working breeds rarely reach for the name because the irony doesn't land — a Princess Mastiff reads as a joke, a Princess Yorkie reads as accurate.
What's worth noticing is the cat performance. Princess does meaningfully better on Persians and Domestic Longhairs than on shorthair cats. The name pairs with breeds whose physical presentation already reads as regal — long fur, deliberate movement, a certain disdain. The owners aren't engineering this consciously; they're matching the name to the visual signal the cat is already sending.
Disney and the name that didn't quite fit
Disney didn't put Princess on a princess. The Lady and the Tramp Cocker Spaniel is named Lady, not Princess. The result is that Princess as a pet name developed without a single dominant cultural anchor — no specific film, no particular cartoon. That's unusual for a name this popular, and it's part of why Princess reads as a household-internal name rather than a culturally borrowed one. Owners aren't naming their dog after anyone. They're declaring a private title.
Why Princess will never become a baby name
Princess sits well outside the SSA top 1000 and shows no movement. American parents read it as too definitionally a noun to function as a name — and the few times it's used on babies, it tends to be a stage name or a nickname rather than a legal first name. That gives pet owners uncontested access to it, which matters. Princess is one of the cleanest pet-only names in the top 50, alongside Buddy and Lucky. The pet domain owns it without competition.