2,573 cat names sit in the rare band, averaging 35 registrations each against 140 across all cat names. Every one is carried by a real animal in a public register, which is the difference between this and a list somebody wrote to sound unusual.
Rarer than the dog equivalent, for a structural reason
Far fewer distinct names are recorded for cats than for dogs, so the cat catalogue is concentrated: its rare band holds 2,573 names where the dog one holds 9,046. A rare cat name is rarer in the sense that fewer cats are recorded at all, not that cat owners are more inventive.
The shape is ordinary. 1,445 are two syllables and 1,036 classify easy-to-call — these are usable names that few people happened to choose, not difficult ones.
Where the gender data thins out
415 of them measure unisex, a much higher share than the catalogue as a whole. That is a limitation showing through rather than a finding: gender here needs at least five sexed records, and a name fifteen animals carry rarely has them, so it lands in the middle by default.
Read a unisex label in this band as thin evidence rather than as a measured middle. The name pages say which they are.
Narrowing it
Two and a half thousand names is too many to read. 515 are four letters or fewer and 898 are names a dictionary lists for people — either filter cuts the list to something finishable, and both combine with the rest of the archive.
What are unique cat names?
Here it is measured rather than judged: 2,573 cat names whose share across eleven registers is small, averaging 35 registrations each.
Are these real cat names?
Every one is carried by a real animal in a public register — that is how it was counted. Nothing on this page was invented to sound unusual.
Why are so many marked unisex?
Because gender needs at least five sexed records and a rare name rarely has them. 415 of this band measures unisex, which in the rare band means thin evidence rather than a measured middle.
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.