There is a band between the most popular names and the rare ones that most people are actually looking for: recognisable, spelled correctly first time by a vet, and not shared with three other animals at the park. 742 names sit there.
What counts as a common pet name here?
A name whose share of the registers puts it below the popular band but well above rare. The bands come from the same measured share that orders every list on this site.
How is popularity measured?
As the average share a name holds across eleven public registers, not as a raw total — otherwise a name common in a large city would outrank one common in a small one purely because the city is bigger.
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.