753 cat names end in -a, and of those with a recorded sex, 579 measure female against 61 male. It is the clearest gender signal in the cat catalogue and an almost exact mirror of the -o ending at the other end of the alphabet.
The ending does two jobs at once
328 of the slice classifies soft-sounding: an open vowel with no hard stop in front of it. So the ending carries a gender reading and a softness reading together, and there is no way to take one without the other. Luna, Bella, Nala, Mia.
Two beats or four, and it matters
417 have two syllables and 307 have three or more. The two-beat ones average 160 registrations against 53 for the longer ones — the catalogue's usual length penalty, showing up inside a single ending.
Calling it indoors
An open final vowel is the loudest ending available, which matters less for a cat than for a dog. The property that earns its keep at close quarters is different: -a stretches. A name whose last sound you can hold is a name you can call twice without it becoming a shout.
Are cat names ending in -a female?
Mostly: 579 female against 61 male among the names with a recorded sex. The ending is read as feminine in English whatever the name it is attached to.
Why do so many cat names end in -a?
It is the feminine ending across the Romance languages and the default open vowel in English nicknames, and 328 of these also classify soft-sounding — the two properties arrive together.
Are shorter -a names used more?
Yes: 160 registrations for the two-syllable ones against 53 for those of three beats or more.
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 four 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. Five of the eleven registers are North American and they supply 86% of the records, so read the ordering as naming in those places rather than worldwide. Browse the whole catalogue or read how the data is put together.