Princess. Prince. Precious. Penelope. Pearl. No other letter in this catalogue is so concentrated on names about rank and value, and the two at the top of the list are the plainest statement of it. 125 of the letter classifies elegant-sounding.
It is one of the larger letters
754 names at 69 registrations each — big, and used slightly above the catalogue rate. That combination is uncommon: most large letters are large because they are diluted, and P is not.
Long, for a busy letter
172 of it runs to three syllables or more and 113 to eight letters or more. Penelope, Precious, Pumpkin, Peanut. The status names are long names, because grandeur in English takes syllables — and that ordinarily costs use, which here it does not.
The plosive underneath all of it
Whatever the name means, a P opens on a stop, and that is what makes these carry. 116 of the letter is a single syllable — Pip, Piper clipped, Prince — and those are the ones that work outdoors, where Penelope becomes Pen whether or not you agreed to it.
What are the most popular pet names starting with P?
Princess, Penny, Prince, Phoebe and Piper, ordered by how many animals carry each across eleven public registers.
Why are there so many royal-sounding P names?
Princess, Prince, Precious, Penelope and Pearl are all in the top of the letter, and 125 of it classifies elegant-sounding. The letter has more status vocabulary in it than any other.
Are P names long?
Longer than most: 172 of them have three syllables or more. Unusually, that does not cost them use — the letter still averages 69 registrations per name.
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.