How many dogs are named Bella?

Picture: a painted park with 37 dogs on the lawn and your dog at the gate wearing a licence tag. 3 Poodle & doodles, 2 Labrador, 3 Pit bull, 2 Chihuahua, 5 Shih tzu, 5 Yorkie, 2 Shepherd, 1 Frenchie & bulldogs, 3 Maltese & bichon, 1 Dachshund, 10 Mixed & other

Where they are registered

NYC3,461
Seattle108
Cambridge78
Zurich42

#1 of 42,545 names
1 in 104 dogs
99 % girls
▼ falling

Top breeds

Mixed & other 27 %
Yorkie 13 %
Shih tzu 13 %

Most Bellas in NYC ZIP 10312 · 10314 · 10306

Spelled differently?

Neighbours on the leaderboard

My dog is a…

Bellas by birth year

Share of each year's puppies, against this name's average (dotted).

Bella: the numbers by city

3,689 licensed dogs are named Bella: 3,461 in New York City, 108 in Seattle, 78 in Cambridge (MA), 42 in Zurich.

It ranks #1 of 42,545 names, 1 in 104 dogs; 99 % of Bellas with a recorded sex are girls; dogs born in 2020–2024 carry it 68 % as often as dogs born in 2010–2014.

Dogs named Bella by city · data read 2026-11-14
City	Dogs	Share of city	What is counted	Licence	Portal date
New York City	3,461	1.04 %	distinct dogs licensed 2014–2025	NYC DOHMH dog licence	2026-07-15
Seattle	108	0.42 %	active licences on 2026-10-06	Seattle pet licence (dogs)	2026-10-06
Cambridge (MA)	78	0.61 %	licence years 2018–2027, deduplicated	Cambridge dog licence	2026-11-09
Zurich	42	0.42 %	register on 2025-12-31	Stadt Zürich dog register	2026-11-03

Breeds painted on the lawn: Poodle & doodles 3 · Labrador 2 · Pit bull 3 · Chihuahua 2 · Shih tzu 5 · Yorkie 5 · Shepherd 2 · Frenchie & bulldogs 1 · Maltese & bichon 3 · Dachshund 1 · Mixed & other 10

Bellas by birth year, 2005–2024 (New York, Cambridge and Zurich records). 100 % = this name's average share.
Born	Bellas	All dogs	Against average
2005	66	5,703	113 %
2006	63	6,993	88 %
2007	98	8,550	112 %
2008	102	10,006	100 %
2009	142	11,493	121 %
2010	177	13,242	131 %
2011	180	13,872	127 %
2012	182	15,734	113 %
2013	212	17,599	118 %
2014	228	20,417	109 %
2015	242	22,482	105 %
2016	268	24,265	108 %
2017	231	25,369	89 %
2018	263	24,663	104 %
2019	230	24,231	93 %
2020	235	30,773	75 %
2021	223	23,773	92 %
2022	141	17,796	78 %
2023	111	13,467	81 %
2024	76	9,238	81 %

This tool counts dogs with a given name in the official open dog-licence records of New York City, Seattle, Cambridge (MA) and Zurich — 382,636 named dogs as of November 2026.

How it is worked out

Matching a name

We strip accents, punctuation and case, and keep the words: “José” is JOSE, “Mr. Peanut” is MR PEANUT. A name must match exactly; “Luna Belle” is its own name. Placeholders such as “Unknown” or “Name not provided”, and names under two letters, are left out.

Counting dogs

Counts are distinct dogs per city, added up; the four cities do not overlap. New York: one dog per unique name, sex, birth date, breed and ZIP code (334,091). Seattle: one per licence number (25,596). Cambridge: one per unique name, breed, birth year, sex and masked location (12,867). Zurich: the latest register snapshot (10,082). Total 382,636 dogs and 42,545 different names.

Limits of the count

Two dogs with an identical profile in one New York ZIP code merge into one, and a dog that moved ZIP code can count twice. The time windows differ by city, and New York's includes licences since 2014. Unlicensed dogs are not in any registry.

Rank and “1 in N”

Names are ranked by total; equal totals share a rank. “1 in N” is 382,636 divided by the name's total, rounded.

Breeds

Breeds are as recorded in New York, Seattle and Cambridge licences (Zurich's file has none), grouped into twelve: poodle and doodles, Labrador, golden retriever, pit bull, chihuahua, shih tzu, Yorkie, shepherd, Frenchie and bulldogs, Maltese and bichon, dachshund, and mixed and other. Percentages are of dogs with a recorded breed, shown when at least five have one.

Girls, trend, ZIP codes

The share of girls is shown when at least ten dogs have a recorded sex (Seattle records none). The trend compares births in 2020–2024 with 2010–2014 as a share of all births in those years: rising at 125 % or more, falling at 80 % or less, no label under 30 dogs. ZIP codes are New York's top three, shown only with two or more dogs.

The picture

Each painted dog stands for 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 or 500 dogs, the smallest step that keeps the lawn at 60 dogs or fewer. Their breeds are the name's breed mix, split by largest remainder. A name with 25 dogs or fewer gets the small yard; otherwise the scene is the city where the name is the largest share of that city's dogs: a city park for New York or Cambridge, a beach for Seattle, snow for Zurich. The same name always draws the same park.

Spellings and neighbours

“Spelled differently?” lists names with at least five dogs that are one letter away (two for names of six letters or more). Neighbours are the two names above and below on the leaderboard.

Korean input

Hangul is turned into Latin letters: first a short list of 25 names that are English words (초코 is Choco), then a sound-by-sound spelling with one rule (a final consonant moves to a following vowel: 별이 is Byeori), then, for names ending in 이, the stem. The first spelling on record is shown, and every spelling tried is listed with its count.

Art

Illustration: AI-generated (Gemini), edited by plusbeauxjours. The number of dogs, their breeds and every word on the tag are placed by code from the data.

About Korean data

Korea has no published dog-name data. The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs reports 3.49 million cumulative registrations, dogs and cats together (May 27, 2025), with no name statistics, and local-government files on data.go.kr carry totals only. Private survey reports are not used here. Korean names are looked up in the four cities' records and never shown as Korean counts.

Sources · checked 2026-11-14

NYC Open Data (NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene) · NYC Dog Licensing Dataset (nu7n-tubp) checked 2026-11-14
Every New York City count, breed, sex, birth year and ZIP code. Rows updated 2026-07-15.
City of Seattle · Seattle Pet Licenses (jguv-t9rb) checked 2026-11-14
Active Seattle dog licences, current as of October 6, 2026. Public Domain.
City of Cambridge Animal Commission · Dogs of Cambridge (sckh-3xyx) checked 2026-11-14
Cambridge (MA) dog licences, licence years 2018–2027. ODC PDDL. Rows updated 2026-11-09.
Stadt Zürich, Hundekontrolle der Stadtpolizei · Hundenamen aus dem Hundebestand der Stadt Zürich, seit 2014 (sid_stapo_hundenamen_od1002) checked 2026-11-14
Zurich's dog register on 2025-12-31. CC0. Updated 2026-11-03.
농림축산식품부 · 보도자료 2025-05-27: 반려동물 누적 등록 349만 마리 checked 2026-11-14
Korea's cumulative registrations: 3.49 million dogs and cats together. It has no name statistics.
공공데이터포털 (data.go.kr) · 지자체 반려동물 등록 현황 (예: 15098153) checked 2026-11-14
Local-government registration files: totals only, no name column.

Good to know

Not a census. Counts are dogs in four cities' licence records, never an estimate for a country. Unlicensed dogs are missing.

The records include past licences. A count is not a count of dogs living today.

Breeds are as recorded in licences. Nothing here is veterinary or breed advice.

Made by plusbeauxjours from open city data. Not a product of, or endorsed by, New York City, Seattle, Cambridge or Zurich. The licence tag in the picture is ours, not a city's.

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Questions

Where do these numbers come from?

From four official open dog-licence registries: New York City, Seattle, Cambridge (Massachusetts) and Zurich. We downloaded them on November 14, 2026 and counted each dog once. Nothing is estimated, and no registry is contacted when you type.

Is this how many dogs in the US have this name?

No. It is the number in these four registries only, 382,636 named dogs in all. We never scale it up to a national figure. Dogs without a licence are not in any registry, and many dogs are never licensed.

What does rising mean?

We compare dogs born in 2020–2024 with dogs born in 2010–2014, as a share of all dogs born in those years. Rising means the name's share grew by a quarter or more; falling means it dropped by a fifth or more. Names with fewer than 30 such dogs get no label.

Are dogs counted twice?

We remove repeats inside each city: New York lists licence periods, so a dog is one unique name, sex, birth date, breed and ZIP code. Two dogs with an identical profile in one ZIP code merge into one, and a dog that moved ZIP code can count twice. The records also include past licences, back to 2014 in New York.

Last updated 2026-11-14 · Data: NYC, Seattle, Cambridge (MA) and Zurich open dog-licence records