42 names begin with X. That is the whole letter — fewer than any other initial in this catalogue, small enough that the list below is not a selection but an inventory. And Xena alone accounts for something close to half of every registration in it.
Two sounds, neither of them X
An initial X in English is said as a Z — Xena, Xavier — or, in the Chinese borrowings, as a sh: Xiao, Xia. The letter never actually makes the sound it makes in the middle of a word. Anyone reading your pet's name off a form will guess, and they will guess wrong about half the time.
Where the names come from
Greek (Xena, Xenia, Xerxes), Basque by way of Spanish (Xavier), and Chinese. There is no native English stock here at all, which is why the letter is the size it is: only 8 of it is a dictionary-listed given name.
Short, and there is nothing long
18 of the letter is four letters or fewer, and the letter runs to essentially nothing above that. If you want an initial nobody at your park will have, this is the strongest guarantee in the alphabet — with the standing cost that you will spell it aloud for the animal's entire life.
What pet names start with X?
Xena, Xiao, Xander, Xenia and Xavier are the most registered. The letter holds 42 names in total, so that is very nearly all of them.
How do you pronounce an X name?
As a Z in the Greek and Latin ones — Xena, Xavier — and as a sh in the Chinese borrowings like Xiao and Xia. An initial X never makes the ks sound it makes in the middle of a word.
Is an X name a good idea?
It is the most reliable way to have an initial nobody shares, since only 42 names in the catalogue start with it. The cost is spelling it out for the rest of the animal's life.
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.