National love your pet day is next week (Monday 20th February), and with some incredible animal movies over the years, it’s no surprise that this may have influenced pet owners when naming their furry friends.
Interested to find out the most popular movie inspired pet names, the experts at Onlinecasinos.co.uk created a seedlist of the 20 most popular films with pets, and utilised global search volumes database Ahrefs to determine the most inspiring names.
The most popular movie inspired pet names:
| Rank | Pet name | Film | Animal | Annual global
search volumes |
| 1 | Lassie | Lassie come home | Dog | 528,000 |
| 2 | Beethoven | Beethoven | Dog | 516,000 |
| 3 | Togo | Togo | Dog | 276,000 |
| 4 | Bolt | Bolt | Dog | 118,800 |
| 5 | Toto | The Wizard of Oz | Dog | 87,600 |
| 6 | Salem | Sabrina the Teenage Witch | Cat | 80,400 |
| 7 | Hooch | Turner & Hooch | Dog | 58,800 |
| 8 | Lady | Lady and the Tramp | Dog | 51,600 |
| 9 | Max | The Grinch | Dog | 48,000 |
| 10 | Hachi | Hachi: A Dog’s Tale | Dog | 40,800 |
| 11 | Ruby | Rescued By Ruby | Dog | 32,400 |
| 12 | Bailey | A Dog’s Purpose | Dog | 28,800 |
| 13 | Marley | Marley and me | Dog | 21,600 |
| 14 | Bruiser Woods | Legally Blonde | Dog | 16,800 |
| 15 | Blue | Red Dog: True Blue | Dog | 14,400 |
Please find the full data set attached here.
‘Lassie’ is the most popular pet name from movies
Onlinecasinos.co.uk can reveal that the most popular movie inspired pet name is Lassie with an average of 528,000 global searches for this dog name (that’s 44,000 searches each month). This pet name has become increasingly popular since the most recent Lassie film release in 2020, sparking popularity.
In second place is Beethoven with 516,000 yearly searches for the pet name. Although there are eight Beethoven movies, this pet name has 12,000 fewer yearly searches than Lassie. Beethoven from the movie is a Saint Bernard breed.
Placing third is Togo with 276,000 yearly searches for the dog name. This Disney film was released in 2019, with the dog name garnering around half the monthly searches of Lassie in first place. Nevertheless, this Siberian Husky’s loyalty and intelligence has inspired many pet owners in the naming process of their new pets.
In fourth place is Bolt with 118,800 yearly searches for this dog name. This is a cartoon film which centres a dog named Bolt, who has spent his entire life on the set of a television series, and firmly believes that his super powers are real.
Toto ranks fifth with 87,600 yearly global searches for this pooch name. (31,200 fewer yearly searches than Bolt in fourth place.) The dog name Toto is most famously known as the Cairn Terrier from ‘The Wizard of Oz’. The top 5 are all dog names, which goes without saying as dogs are the most popular pet worldwide.
‘Salem’ is the most popular feline name from movies
In sixth place is Salem from ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch’, and is the only cat name to appear in this list with 80,400 annual global searches for this pet name (that’s 6,700 monthly searches).
Methodology:
- Onlinecasinos.co.uk sought to find out the most popular movie inspired pet names.
- To do this, a seed list of popular movie pet names was gathered by using a variety of articles such as Glamourmagazine.co.uk, Timeout.com and Gamerant.com.
- Onlinecasinos.co.uk then inserted pet name from the list into the Ahrefs global database, to establish the global monthly average Google searches for the pet names.
- To avoid anonymous results terms such as ‘Marley dog’, ‘Lassie dog name’ were used, to ensure the searches regard the dog names from the films.
- The figures were also multiplied by 12 in order to obtain the average yearly searches, which can be found in the data spreadsheet.
- All data was collected on February 14th 2023, and is accurate as of then.
Photo credid: otsphoto/Shutterstock.com