This is the one origin where almost every name means something you can verify. 33 of the 38 Slavic names here carry a meaning read off a cited dictionary page, which is 87% \u2014 against 1% across the catalogue as a whole.
That is not because Slavic names are special. It is because they were done properly: this slice was built name by name, each meaning checked against its source before it could publish, and nothing that failed the check is on the page.
What they mean
Zima is winter. Vuk is wolf. Danica is the morning star. Vera is faith, Nadia is hope, Sonya is wisdom, Olga is holy, Mila is grace. Igor is Yngvi's army, which came into Russian from Old Norse.
Laika means barker, and the dog it is named for was the first living creature to orbit the Earth. 444 animals in these registers carry it.
The shape of them
They run soft and even: 30 of the 38 are two syllables, 22 classify soft-sounding, and only one is a single syllable. 24 measure female against 9 male. They average 175 registrations each, above the catalogue's 68 but well below the Latin or Italian sets \u2014 these are used, not crowded.
Sasha leads at 1,884, then Mila at 949 and Laika at 444. Sasha is a diminutive of Alexander and goes to both sexes, which is why it sits in the unisex band rather than either gendered list.
One name the check refused
Belka looks like an easy win \u2014 it is the Russian for squirrel, and it was the name of a dog that flew before Laika's successors. English Wiktionary has no such entry: it records Belka as a Polish surname. So Belka is in the catalogue with its count and no meaning, because the meaning we all know is not the meaning the source states.
What do Slavic pet names mean?
Most of them, verifiably: Zima is winter, Vuk is wolf, Danica the morning star, Vera faith, Nadia hope, Sonya wisdom, Olga holy, Mila grace. 33 of the 38 carry a checked meaning.
Why is this slice so well documented?
It was built name by name with the meaning checked against its cited page before publishing. 87% coverage here against 1% across the catalogue is a fact about the work, not about the names.
What is the most popular Slavic pet name?
Sasha, at 1,884 registrations. It is a diminutive of Alexander used for both sexes, which is why it measures unisex rather than male or female.
Is Russian counted separately from other Slavic languages?
No. Several Slavic languages share these names, and splitting a name four of them use would be precision this data does not have.
Every count on this site is a tally of real registrations: pet licences and shelter intakes published as open data by New York, Seattle, Austin, Montgomery County, Cambridge, Zurich, Basel and three Australian councils. Popularity here is the average share a name holds across those registers, so a name common in a small city is not buried by one common in a large one. Nine of the eleven sources are North American, so read the ordering as naming in those places rather than worldwide. Browse the whole catalogue or read how the data is put together.