How many dogs are named Merlin?

Picture: a painted park with 59 dogs on the lawn and your dog at the gate wearing a licence tag. 5 Poodle & doodles, 4 Labrador, 1 Golden retriever, 4 Chihuahua, 3 Yorkie, 5 Shepherd, 1 Frenchie & bulldogs, 4 Maltese & bichon, 2 Dachshund, 30 Mixed & other

Where they are registered

NYC76
Seattle21
Cambridge9
Zurich12

#544 of 42,545 names
1 in 3,243 dogs
4 % girls
steady

Top breeds

Mixed & other 51 %
Poodle & doodles 9 %
Shepherd 9 %

Most Merlins in NYC ZIP 10023 · 10128 · 10003

Spelled differently?

Neighbours on the leaderboard

My dog is a…

Merlins by birth year

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

Merlin: the numbers by city

118 licensed dogs are named Merlin: 76 in New York City, 21 in Seattle, 9 in Cambridge (MA), 12 in Zurich.

It ranks #544 of 42,545 names, 1 in 3,243 dogs; 4 % of Merlins with a recorded sex are girls; dogs born in 2020–2024 carry it 92 % as often as dogs born in 2010–2014.

Dogs named Merlin by city · data read 2026-11-14
City	Dogs	Share of city	What is counted	Licence	Portal date
New York City	76	0.02 %	distinct dogs licensed 2014–2025	NYC DOHMH dog licence	2026-07-15
Seattle	21	0.08 %	active licences on 2026-10-06	Seattle pet licence (dogs)	2026-10-06
Cambridge (MA)	9	0.07 %	licence years 2018–2027, deduplicated	Cambridge dog licence	2026-11-09
Zurich	12	0.12 %	register on 2025-12-31	Stadt Zürich dog register	2026-11-03

Breeds painted on the lawn: Poodle & doodles 5 · Labrador 4 · Golden retriever 1 · Chihuahua 4 · Yorkie 3 · Shepherd 5 · Frenchie & bulldogs 1 · Maltese & bichon 4 · Dachshund 2 · Mixed & other 30

Merlins by birth year, 2005–2024 (New York, Cambridge and Zurich records). 100 % = this name's average share.
Born	Merlins	All dogs	Against average
2005	0	5,703	0 %
2006	0	6,993	0 %
2007	2	8,550	85 %
2008	1	10,006	37 %
2009	2	11,493	64 %
2010	5	13,242	138 %
2011	6	13,872	158 %
2012	2	15,734	46 %
2013	7	17,599	145 %
2014	4	20,417	72 %
2015	5	22,482	81 %
2016	9	24,265	135 %
2017	9	25,369	130 %
2018	8	24,663	118 %
2019	7	24,231	106 %
2020	8	30,773	95 %
2021	2	23,773	31 %
2022	7	17,796	144 %
2023	7	13,467	190 %
2024	2	9,238	79 %

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