Cat names

Because a cat's name rarely has to travel more than one room, you get far more freedom than dog owners do. What matters instead is distinctiveness at conversational volume, and the sounds cats are built to notice: bright, high, sibilant, and very often ending in an ee.

Worth choosing with one eye on the future: whatever you pick will be shortened, stretched and mangled within a month. The name below is the one that goes on the microchip; the name you actually use will evolve on its own. Filter all 3,068 in the name quiz.

What makes a good cat name

• Two syllables with an ee, oh or ah ending — the shape cats respond to most reliably.
• Sibilants and soft consonants (S, SH, Z, CH) sit close to the frequencies cats use with each other.
• In a multi-cat house, make the names acoustically different, not just thematically different.

There's a longer version of this in the guide to How to name your cat, including the tests worth running before you commit to anything.

72 names, with what they mean

A cross-section of the 3,068 names tagged for cat, picked to span mythology, world languages, nature, food and screen. Every one of them, and 2,996 more, is filterable in the name quiz.

Keep looking

Stack filters in the name quiz — gender, personality, cultural origin, syllable count, sound — or start from a theme. Names for other animals:

• Dog names
• Bird names
• Fish names
• Small pet names
• Reptile names
• Amphibian names
• Farm animal names