Izzy, Indy, Iggy, Indie. The most used I names in this catalogue are abbreviations, and in one case the full form is sitting right underneath it: Izzy outranks Isabella comfortably. I is the letter where owners skipped the formal step.
Small, and thinly used
150 names begin with I at 46 registrations each, both among the lowest figures of any letter. There is no mystery in it: English has few given names starting with a bare I, and fewer still that shorten well.
It leans female
59 measure female against 49 male, and 42 end in -a. Iris, Ivy, Ida, Isla — the letter's own vocabulary is largely botanical and largely feminine, which is not true of any letter near it in size.
Short by construction
78 of the letter is four letters or fewer, one of the highest shares in the catalogue, and it is a direct consequence of the first point: a slice made of nicknames is a slice made of short words. If brevity is what you are after, this small letter delivers it more reliably than most large ones.
What are good pet names starting with I?
Izzy, Isabella, Iris, Indy and Iggy lead the list, ordered by registrations across eleven public registers.
Why are there so few I pet names?
150 of them, against several hundred for a mid-sized letter. English simply has few given names beginning with a bare I, and this catalogue can only hold what the registers recorded.
Are I names short?
Unusually so — 78 of the letter is four letters or fewer, because most of what is in it is the short form of something longer.
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.