Hyphenated pet names, and why most of them are only ever written

Most names in these registers are one word. Fewer than two hundred are not: nearly all carry a hyphen, and a handful carry a space instead. That is a little over one name in a hundred, and as a group they are unlike the rest of the catalogue in every measurement — longer, rarer, and drawn overwhelmingly from a single register. They are worth a page because the thing they have in common is not a style; it is that most of them were written down rather than called out.

Two hyphens doing two jobs

Sort them by eye and they fall into two piles that have nothing to do with each other. In the first the hyphen sits inside a single name that has always had one: Wall-E, the most registered of the whole group, and after it T-Bone, Q-Tip, T-Rex, Obi-Wan, Scooby-Doo. These are characters and objects borrowed whole, and the hyphen came with them.

In the second the hyphen is joining two names that could each stand alone: Coco-Chanel, Gus-Gus, Joe-Joe, Evita-Maria, Anna-Chilchil, Winnie-Sheila. Nobody shouts these across a field. They are registered names in the way a person has a registered name, and the animal gets called the first half of it.

One city writes most of them

Two thirds of the joined-up names in this catalogue come from Zurich's register, with the rest scattered thinly across New York, Seattle, Austin and a few others. That is not a fact about Swiss taste. It is a fact about what a form asks for: some registers record the name an animal is called, and some record the name it was registered under, and a register of the second kind collects double-barrelled entries the first kind never sees.

It is a useful reminder about every count on this site. A name's number is a count of paperwork, not of animals being called across a park, and the two come apart most visibly right here.

They are longer, and used far less

The group averages a little over three syllables against two for the catalogue as a whole — half again as long, which follows from being two names stapled together. And they average roughly a seventh of the registrations of an ordinary name. A hyphenated name is, by these measures, a rare and long one.

That is the practical consequence, and it is the same one every dog trainer arrives at from the other direction. A three-syllable name is not what gets used at the door or in the park; the first two beats are. If you register Coco-Chanel, you own a dog called Coco, and it is worth choosing the half you will actually say rather than discovering it in the second week.

When a hyphen is the right answer

There is one case where the hyphen earns its place, and it is the first pile rather than the second: a name that is genuinely one word with a hyphen in it, short enough to say whole. Wall-E and T-Rex are two syllables and survive being shouted; Q-Tip is two and does the same. The rule is not to avoid hyphens but to check the syllable count on the far side of it — a hyphen joining two short things is fine, and a hyphen joining two names is a paperwork decision you should make knowingly.

And if the double-barrelled version is what you want on the form, that is a perfectly good reason to have it. Just pick the call name deliberately, because otherwise the household will pick it for you.