571 names begin with L and they average 107 registrations each. No other letter comes near that. L is not the largest initial — several letters hold more names — but the animals are piled onto it more heavily than onto anything else, and that is the single most striking fact in a letter-by-letter reading of this catalogue.
Lucky, Lily, Lulu, Luna, Lady
The top of the list is where the weight is. These are not obscure choices being counted carefully; they are among the most registered names in the entire catalogue, and five of them happen to start with the same letter.
It is also the softest large letter
257 of the letter classifies soft-sounding — close to half of it. L is a liquid consonant: there is no stop in it anywhere, and a name that opens on one and ends on a vowel has nothing hard in it at all. Luna, Lulu, Lola, Lily.
Which is why it reads female
228 measure female against 158 male, and 119 end in -a. The softness and the lean arrive together, as they do everywhere in this data — you cannot pick one without the other.
The catch
Density is crowding seen from the other side. A slice averaging 107 registrations is a slice where your choice is shared, and at the top of this particular list it is shared with thousands. If that matters to you, work down the list rather than across it.
What are the most popular pet names starting with L?
Lucky, Lily, Lulu, Luna and Lady, and they are popular in absolute terms rather than just for the letter — L averages 107 registrations per name, the highest of any initial.
Why are L names so common?
The letter is a liquid consonant with no stop in it, which makes the names easy to say and easy to soften. 257 of the letter classifies soft-sounding, and soft names are chosen heavily throughout this catalogue.
Are L names mostly female?
They lean that way: 228 female against 158 male, with 119 of the letter ending in -a.
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.