1,531 dog names carry the rare label here, and they average 152 registrations each. The dog catalogue as a whole averages 70. So the rare band is used more than the average dog name, which reads like an error and is not one — it is a fact about how the bands are cut, and it changes which filter you should be using.
What the bands actually measure
Popularity here is a band, and the bands are drawn so each holds a workable number of names rather than so the bottom one holds the least-used. Underneath rare sits something much larger: 9,046 dog names at 22 registrations each. That is the genuinely unused end of the catalogue and it is around six times the size of the rare band.
If you came looking for a name almost nobody has, rare is the wrong filter. It is the fourth rung down, not the bottom one.
What the rare band is actually good for
It is where a name is established without being crowded: recorded often enough to show it works on real animals, not so often that a park will turn round. That is what most people mean when they ask for something rare, even though it is not what the word says. 469 of the band is four letters or fewer if you want uncrowded and brief together.
The split tells you nothing
746 measure male against 613 female, close to the catalogue's own lean. Rarity does not sort by sex, and a page claiming it did would be reading noise.
Are rare dog names actually rare?
Less than the label suggests. The band averages 152 registrations per name against 70 across all dog names. The genuinely unused names sit in the very-unique band: 9,046 of them at 22 registrations each.
Which filter gives the least common dog names?
Very-unique rather than rare. It holds 9,046 names against 1,531 in the rare band, and each is carried by a small fraction as many dogs.
Why keep a band that is not the rarest?
Because most people asking for a rare name want an uncrowded one, not an unused one. The rare band is where a name is proven but not saturated, and that is a different and more useful thing.
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.