Dog Naming Tips

Stumped On What To Name Your New Dog?
No Problem! Get Dog Name Ideas and Tips from The Seeing Eye

As the oldest guide dog training school in the world, we name around 500 puppies every year — that's about 42 dog names per month! What a lot of name-storming! So we’ve developed a method to make our naming process a little easier and more uniform.

Dog Naming Tips

• KEEP the name to one or two syllables. Occasionally, The Seeing Eye does select three syllable names. Shorter names are easier to say and when paired with a command, make for faster communication with your dog.
 
• MAKE sure the name does not sound too close to any commands that you plan to use because this will confuse the dog. For example, “Mo” can sound like “No” and “Kit” sounds like “Sit.”
 
• AVOID names that have negative connotations. Think of what it would feel like to run through a public space shouting your dog’s name. If you would be embarrassed, you shouldn’t choose that name.

Our Greatest Hits

Whether it’s a guide dog, another type of service dog, or a beloved family pet, a pup’s name gets a lot of use! Here are some of our favorites…

Popular Male and Female Dog Names:

Unique (But Still Cute!) Dog Names:

How do we come up with so many puppy names?

The Seeing Eye Puppy Development Manager has the honor of generating and bestowing the names on our puppies when they're two weeks old. All the puppies in a litter are given a name that starts with the same letter. The litters are named alphabetically. We start with A on October 1st, the beginning of our fiscal year. Then each puppy in the next litter gets a name that begins with B, and all the way through to the “Z” litter, when we start over again.

“Our dogs have between 65 and 70 litters each year. So we go through the entire alphabet a couple of times a year. Sometimes with the tough letters like X or Z, I really have to get creative. Many of our names are selected by Seeing Eye donors.”

— Christine Higham, Puppy Development Manager at The Seeing Eye

The Name Buddy

The first Seeing Eye dog was a German shepherd named Kiss. When Morris Frank, a 19-year-old college student, was matched with her, he changed her name to Buddy. Morris Frank would title his memoir The First Lady of The Seeing Eye in tribute to Buddy, and he would name every Seeing Eye dog he subsequently worked with after her. After Morris Frank's death in 1980, The Seeing Eye retired the name Buddy in her honor.