When you can name your pet after anything from good fortune (Lucky) to food and drink (Muffin and Brandy), you would think that we would be much more original with the names we select for our pets. But, it turns out, that most people select the same names over and over again.

When my sister got her American bulldog, her family spent several weeks trying to come up with the perfect name for this soon to be 150-pound dog. Roscoe, Brutus, Goliath, and Cody were just a few of the names they considered. “We wanted something that fit a big dog, but nothing that sounded scary,” she says. “We wanted something original too.”

Eventually they settled on the name “Maximus”—“Max” for short. I had to laugh. Without knowing it, she had selected one of the nation’s most popular pet names. Even though there are dogs named Madonna and cats named Elvis, the most common dog names, like Max, Charlie, and Lucky, and cat names, like Missy and Smokey still reign year after year.

While less traditional names don’t rule, they certainly can make your head turn. With eccentric names like Ebay, Yahoo, and Spam, we certainly know, at least, what generation these cats and dogs live in.

For some pets though, a name can lead to an adoption. Petfinder.com, the largest online database of adoptable pets, said that Forever Home Rescue New England in Wapole, MA, had trouble finding a home for an adoptable dog named “Buck.”After changing his name to “Joe the Plumber” during the election season, more people viewed his picture and he was quickly adopted. And it’s been know that if you name two puppies from the same litter after a pair of things, like “Peanut Butter” and “Jelly” or “Hugs” and “Kisses,” they are more likely to be adopted as a pair.

Petfinder.com, announced today the top 10 most popular and most unusual pet names for 2008, and for the second year in a row, “Buddy” is the No. 1 name of Petfinder.com’s 145,242 adoptable dogs, with “Max” coming in again as No. 2. Of the 140,269 cats on Petfinder.com, the No. 1 name is “Lucy,” just barely beating “Molly,” which jumped from No. 10 to the No. 2 slot this year. 
 

Source: Petfinder.com

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