Daisy. Dolly. Dixie. Dexter. The D list has a shape you can hear once it is pointed out: a hard consonant to start, something soft to finish. 96 of the letter ends in -y or -ie, and 350 of it is two syllables.
Why that combination keeps happening
A stop at the front and a lift at the end is the standard English affectionate name: the opening gets attention and the ending takes the edge off it. D supplies the opening more cleanly than most letters, because there is only one way to say it.
It leans male anyway
198 measure male against 130 female, despite an ending that usually reads the other way. 95 classify strong-sounding. Diesel, Duke, Dozer and Dexter are pulling against Daisy and Dolly, and there are more of them.
Short, and used about as much as anything
136 of the letter is four letters or fewer, and the whole letter averages 65 registrations per name. D is a middling letter by every measure except the shape of the names in it, which is the only reason it deserves a page.
What are good dog names starting with D?
Dexter, Diesel, Duke and Dozer lead the male-leaning half of the list; Daisy, Dolly and Dixie the other. The list is ordered by how many animals carry each name.
Why do so many D names end in -y?
96 of them do. A hard opening and a lifting ending is the standard English pattern for an affectionate name, and D gives an unusually clean hard opening.
Are D names male or female?
They lean male — 198 against 130 — which is unusual for a letter with this many diminutive endings in it.
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.