Funny Dog Names

A strong modern word name with both spiritual and secular significance.

Tuff, a corruption of "tough," has been given to approximately 50 baby boys each year for the past few years. Tough, on the other hand, has never charted as a baby name.

The "To Be or Not to Be" jokes, via Shakespeare's tortured prince, will get old by Month Two.

Lithe and leonine name chosen for her daughter by singer Erykah Badu -- whose other child has the number name Seven.

While we don't see many parents adopting Otter as a name for their own babies, Zooey Deschanel put this one in the lexicon when she used it as a middle name for her adorably-named daughter Elsie Otter. Even in the celebrisphere, Otter is one of the most unique baby names we've heard.

Has too many slangy connotations to be considered.

This upbeat, friendly surname name has appeared on television's Battlestar Galactica a handful of cartoons, and on a literary note, a character in Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Sports fans might think of Boomer Esiason, the NFL quarterback turned color commentator. He's not the only athlete to answer to the upbeat nickname.

Friendly but flimsy.

Your teenager will either love you or hate you for choosing this name. Better: Fox.

Icy baby names are currently hot, with names like Icelynn and Iceland trending up for girls. Rapper Gucci Mane chose simple, streamlined Ice for his son 2020-born son, appropriately a winter baby. In 2021, it debuted on the charts for both boys and girls (9 boys, 6 girls).

Several animal names, from Fox to Wolf and even to Tiger, ccan work, but Cougar should stay in its cage. Even John Mellencamp has dropped it.

Along with Shem and Japheth, a son of Noah with a name that's almost never used -- for more obvious reasons than those of his brothers.

Slash is here because model Amber Rose and Def Jam Records exec Alexander AE Edwards named their baby boy Slash Electric Alexander. Is it cool? Or is it violent and terrifying? Or is it both? We're going to go with Door Number 2 and place it in the same category as names like Dagger and Pistol, but we are not models or record execs.

The jazziest nickname for Charles.

A green-skinned superhero from the Marvel universe, played by Vanessa Marshall and Zoe Saldana, among others.

It sounds like a modern nature name, but Leafy was coined as a Puritan nickname for the girls' name Relief, which referred to the relief of Christ.

Sweeping, romantic overtones.

Dodo is one of the few names of the cute repeating-sounds genre that is not alas so cute, being a slang word for someone brainless as well as the name of the infamous extinct bird. Dot, Dottie, Dory, or Thea are all preferable.

Though mountain climbers may want to honor the famed Central Asian mountain range known as the Hindu Kush, associations with marijuana and Jared Kushner make this a hard sell.