Most popular dog names

The most popular dog name is Bella, which is also
the name of one of my parents' dogs (pictured above).
Bella by name and Bella by nature.

Will we be saying goodbye to Fido, Rover and ... Sigmund? Read on to find out.

If you're a pet lover from the US then this coming Monday you get to celebrate National Pet Day! Or if you're from the UK then you get a full month to celebrate pets, as the entire month of April is National Pet Month!

UK pet lovers even get a couple of bonus days in May, as rather greedily, National Pet Month runs from 1st April to 2nd May!

On the theme of pets, MoneySuperMarket recently compiled a chart of the most popular dog names in the UK based on over 165,000 names submitted for pet insurance quotes, and the results were as follows...

1) Bella

Phoebe (pictured above) didn't make the list of popular names,
but she would certainly make the list of popular dogs.

2) Alfie
3) Poppy
4) Charlie
5) Molly
6) Max
7) Lola
8) Ruby
9) Bailey
10) Daisy
11) Oscar
12) Millie
13) Archie
14) Buddy
15) Rosie
16) Milo
17) Teddy
18) Tilly
19) Buster
20) Roxy

The thing that stood out to me is that many traditional dog names such as Rover and Fido, are no longer as popular as they once were, and it seems dogs are increasingly being given names which people would more typically associate with human names, such as Charlie and Molly. In some cases, I think that's probably a good thing, as according to the Dog Names website, there were some bizarre dog names in the olden days, such as Broderick, Sigmund and Hoover.

However, giving human names to dogs does open up the possibility for playing sly tricks on your neighbours, and it reminds me of the following sneaky advice I saw on twitter:

'Tip for dog owners: Undermine the confidence of your neighbours by giving your dog the same name as their child.'

I think that would definitely upset a lot of people, but conversely, I think the reverse could also be true, and some people would probably also find it insulting if their neighbours named their kid after their dog!

You can find more photos of my parents' pugs, Bella and Phoebe, in my previous blog post:
National Pug Day