Simba ranks #82 with 1,183 entries, and the name's entire active life in American pet registries dates from a single 1994 release. The Lion King remains the single most influential film in cat-naming history. Simba — Swahili for "lion," though most owners do not know that — has been the default name for orange tabby cats and golden-coated dogs for thirty years and shows no sign of fading.
The orange-tabby economy
Pull up adoption listings for any American city's orange tabby population and you will see Simba in the top five names at almost every shelter. The visual fit is direct — orange cat, lion cub, done. The name is simpler to pick than to argue with. It also performs strongly on Maine Coons in any color, on long-haired tabbies, and on any cat with notably leonine features.
The dog version of Simba is smaller in volume but real. Golden Retrievers, Chow Chows, Pomeranians, and any sandy or red-coated breed that resembles a lion cub. Pomeranians in particular pull Simba at high rates — the breed's mane-like ruff makes the visual reference unavoidable.
The pair-name story
Simba's most reliable pattern in our data is paired adoption. Households with a Simba have a meaningfully higher chance of also having a Nala than households with any other name. Owners pick the pair deliberately when adopting a male-female set of kittens, or they assign Nala to a second arrival in a household where Simba is already established. The Disney narrative writes itself.
Counter-reading: not every Simba is a Lion King reference. A small but real share of owners pick the name for its Swahili etymology directly, without the Disney layer. These owners are usually East African, of African heritage more broadly, or have lived or traveled in regions where the word's literal meaning is in active use. The cultural register for these households is markedly different from the Disney-default register, and the names are sometimes paired with siblings in similar Swahili roots — Kito, Zuri, Asha.
The 2019 reset
The live-action remake reset the name for a younger generation of owners, in the same way it reset Nala. Children who saw the original in theaters in 1994 and the remake in 2019 are now in their thirties, and many of the Simbas registered in the past five years come from that demographic. The name has had two clean cultural pulses, twenty-five years apart, which is unusual durability. The baby Simba page shows the human version still very small but slowly climbing.