The most popular dog and cat names from 2005.

What happened to the old perennials "Rover" and "Fido"?

And "Max"? For dogs and cats both?

What's that all about?

Oliver? Bella? WTF?

Six cats here, Kali, Greybeard, Grizelle, Hairy, Kitto, and Lope. Kali also gets spelled Cali, Greybeard should have been called Blubeard (He's part London Blue), Grizelle was named for the witch in Willow, who's name is actually Razail, Hairy is also called Harrison (after Harry and the Hendersons), the daughter named Kitto, and Lope (short for interloper) is probably gonna be a short timer. I did have a Tiger 30 years ago.

Note that the lists were compiled from a population of *insured* pets and not the general pet population, and therefore more accurately represent the most popular dog and cat names among people willing to buy pet health insurance.

There's no telling what the lists would look like if it took into account, say, the cats and small-to-medium-sized dogs in my neighborhood, which -- thanks to mountain lions -- don't last long enough for health insurance to have much relevance.

No Garfield and Odie?

I agree that it is important to get to know your pets before naming them. I had a Siamese whom I was going to name "Fredrich Nietzche III" until I got to know him. Had to change it to "Rat Terror". Best cat I ever had.

Geez. None of these names are clever at all. I remember, when I lived in Omaha, there was an orange male cat that wandered the Old Market area. He was cared for by all the merchants, and folks loved him. At some point in his life, his tail had been wacked off. So all the business owners decided to call him Retail. Now that was clever.

Close friend of mine has a cat named 'Oliver' and a dog named 'Jake'. I've had a cat named 'Tigger' and a dog named 'Daisy'. And who hasn't known someone with a cat named 'Shadow'.

This made me think of this nifty Java applet that displays the preponderance of names used throughout history. Just type in a persons name and it will show you the percentage of the population that used that name going back to the 1880's. I won't vouch for the accuracy of the chart but its interesting none the less to go through your family of names and see how common they appear.

http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html

My cousins' family had a black cat 30-40 years ago named Maxwell. It usually got shortened to "Max". My father was fond of calling Max "Maxwell Q. P*ssycat".

Max was quite a character-- the family still misses him.

P.S. Replace the "*" with a "u". Rand, you REALLY need to get some smarter software-- cats don't much to do with female body parts.

Gah. I'm losing it today-- the previous post should read:

P.S. Replace the "*" with a "u". Rand, you REALLY need to get some smarter software-- cats don't have much to do with female body parts.

Too many cat name comments!
Who cares what any woosie would name a cat?
My shelter dog was named Callie by her foster mother. I couldn't improve on that.
But, if I'd adopted a male, I'd have gone with Grimmy, from the superb "Mother Goose and Grim" comic strip.
Mike

My family's last dog was named Rocky. Nice to see he made the list.

To the best I can determine I've raised sixteen cats through my life. Happy to say not one of them had any of those names. >^^