1,139 names here are ones English Wiktionary lists as a male given name, and they average 200 registrations each — the densest gendered group in the catalogue.
The shape is the difference
578 classify easy-to-call and 279 are a single syllable. The female human names hold 161 monosyllables in a slice of similar size, so this set is markedly shorter and blunter.
109 run to three syllables or more, against 271 on the female side. English male given names are simply shorter, and the registers show it.
Which is useful, as it happens
Short and consonant-ended is what carries across a field, so this set arrives pre-optimised for the one job a pet name has to do outdoors. Cooper, Blue, Bear, Zeus.
The cost is the same as everywhere: shorter names collide with cues. 279 single-syllable names is 279 chances to rhyme with sit, stay or no, and that check is one you have to run against your own vocabulary.
What are good human names for a male pet?
Cooper, Blue, Prince and Bear lead these registers. 1,139 names here are ones a dictionary lists as a male given name.
Are male human names shorter?
Measurably: 279 are a single syllable against 161 on the female side, and 578 classify easy-to-call.
Do they clash with commands?
They are likelier to than longer names, because English cues are one syllable too. Read the shortlist aloud against the cues you actually use.
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.