Stephens Cur Names, Stephens Stock Dog Names

The Stephens Cur -- properly the Stephens' Stock -- is the sleek little black cur of southeastern Kentucky, a treeing dog with a story rooted in one Appalachian family. For more than a century the family of Hugh Stephens, in the hills of Hopkins County, kept their own line of small black Mountain Curs, breeding them so carefully and so consistently that by 1970 the dogs were judged distinct enough to be named a breed of their own.

The Stephens line did not appear out of nowhere. Hugh Stephens was one of four men who founded the Mountain Cur club -- the forerunner of today's Original Mountain Cur Breeders Association -- that rescued the Mountain Cur from near-extinction after the Second World War, when the families who had always kept these dogs left the hills for city work. Out of that preservation effort, the Stephens family's black strain emerged as something special. It is a small, compact, well-muscled cur, standing sixteen to twenty-three inches, with a short coat that is black with white trim on the extremities and a narrow, sleek, almost hound-like head.

This is first of all a hunting dog: it excels at treeing squirrel and raccoon and will run in a pack on bigger quarry, from wild boar to bear and cougar. Tenacious on the trail yet biddable and deeply devoted at home, the Stephens Cur takes its names naturally from that glossy black coat, from the Kentucky hills it works, or from its hunting heart. Its black coat suits Onyx, Jet, Shadow, Midnight, Ebony, Raven, Cinder, and Licorice, with Domino for the white-trimmed dogs; its Kentucky-country roots suit Boone, Colt, Cash, Hank, Duke, Jeb, Bo, and Rebel; and its hunting drive wears Hunter, Ranger, Tracker, Gunner, Hawk, and Bear.

Explore our full collection of Stephens Cur and Stephens Stock names below. Filter by gender, save your favourites, and find a name as bold, sleek, and devoted as the little black cur of the Kentucky hills.