The State of Dog Naming 2026

Key Findings

Source-specific figures. Check each source and its sample before quoting a comparison.

The Luna Phenomenon

Luna appears near the top of several separately collected rankings.

4-Year Top Names Trend (US, AKC 2022–2025)

Rank position by year for the most-tracked names. Lower rank number = higher popularity. Names off the top 10 in a given year are shown at rank 11 (off-chart).

United States — AKC Top 10, 2025

Headline ranking for the most-popular dog names in the US for 2025.

International Comparison — Rover 2025

How the US compares to Canada, France, Spain, and UK.

#1 male and female by country

Trending names by country (Rover 2025)

Names that surged in 2025 — distinct local flavor.

Year-Over-Year US Movement (AKC, 2022–2025)

Names that entered or exited the AKC top 10 between 2024 and 2025.

United Kingdom — Agria UK 2022 vs 2025

UK list churn shows the biggest surge in newly-entered names of any tracked market.

Breed-Level Dominance — Sniffspot 2026

Most-popular names by breed across all 142 breeds analyzed. Top 12 by breed coverage.

Geographic Distribution — How Naming Varies State by State

The Sniffspot snapshot has one #1 name for each of the 50 states and Washington, DC. These are rankings from its own data, not a census of all US dogs.

Luna dominates roughly half the country

Out of 51 state-and-DC rankings, Luna is #1 in 25, or 49% of the lists. Bella is #1 in 3; Charlie is #1 in 2. The other 21 lists have another name at #1.

The 21 other #1 names by state or DC

Each entry below has a #1 name other than Luna, Bella, or Charlie in the Sniffspot snapshot. A rank alone does not explain local naming preferences.

Names with the broadest state coverage in the top 10

Beyond the #1 spot, the question is which names appear in the top 10 across the largest number of states. Luna again leads, but the runners-up reveal a different ordering — names that may not win any state but show up almost everywhere.

Famous-dog name matches

This is an exact-name comparison between the AKC 2025 gendered top 10 and the iDogNames famous-dog directory. It does not measure owners' inspiration.

9 of 20 top-10 names match a famous dog

Of the 20 names in the AKC 2025 gender-split top 10, 9 match at least one entry in the iDogNames famous-dog database: 6 of 10 boys' names and 3 of 10 girls' names. Common names can match by chance, so this comparison cannot establish a cultural cause.

Names with multiple directory matches

Three boys' top-10 names have multiple exact-name matches in the current iDogNames directory:

• Duke (boys #7) has four directory matches. This is a count of records sharing the name, not a measure of how often media references influenced owners.
• Max (boys #1) has six directory matches. The AKC rank and the directory count describe separate datasets.
• Hank (boys #2) has two directory matches. The records cannot tell us why Hank appeared in the AKC list.

Girls' name matches

Bella, Daisy, and Sadie have exact-name matches in our famous-dog directory. Luna, Nova, and Ruby have none in this directory snapshot. An absent match does not rule out a cultural influence outside the directory.

Spelling patterns in the selected top-10 lists

These counts describe appearances in AKC and Agria lists from 2022–2025. The same name can appear in more than one list. The lists do not test dog hearing or recall.

Name length

Of 140 counted list appearances, 90 (64%) have names with 4 or 5 letters. Three-letter names account for 11 appearances, six-letter names for 30, and names with at least seven letters for 9. Letter count is not a measure of how easily a dog recognizes a name.

Starting letters in the 2025 lists

B and M each start 9 of 60 counted appearances across the AKC overall, AKC gender-split, and Agria UK 2025 lists. C starts 7 and L starts 6. Repeated names are counted each time they appear; these counts do not establish why owners chose them.

Ending sounds

Examples ending in a vowel sound include Luna, Bella, Daisy, Charlie, and Teddy. Max, Hank, Finn, and Duke end differently. These examples illustrate the lists; we have not measured their acoustic performance in training.

What these rankings cannot tell us

Each publisher measures a different group of dogs over a different period. A name's presence in one top-10 list does not show its frequency among all dogs, and being absent from a list does not give its rank below tenth place.

The lists can show recorded changes within the same publisher's series. They cannot establish why owners chose a name or reliably predict next year's rankings without a tested forecasting method.

Methodology & Data Sources

The table identifies the source and scope of each ranking. The row counts below are not counts of distinct dogs.

Each publisher's ranking reflects its own users or records. We do not add ranks across sources or treat the 8,743 stored ranking rows as a sample of distinct dogs. See the popularity-data methodology for the source-specific page links.

Press Kit — Quote-Ready Facts

For media use. Attribute each source directly; link to this comparison only when it helps readers check the calculation.

Related Resources

Other deep-linked reference pages from iDogNames.

• Reports & Research hub — back to the full collection
• Most Popular Names hub — current top 10 displays + sub-hubs
• All Top Names by Breed — exhaustive breed-by-breed list
• Top Names by US State — state-by-state breakdown
• Top Names by Country — international comparison
• Popularity Data Methodology — full source documentation