Data sources & licenses
Where our cat names come from
Short version: real names of real cats from public records, cleaned and tagged by hand, with every meaning written by us. No names or descriptions are copied from other name sites.
The sources
| Source | What we use | License | Retrieved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seattle Pet Licenses (City of Seattle) | Cat names and how many cats share each one (12,782 cats, 5,870distinct names after cleaning). License numbers, ZIP codes and dates are discarded. | Public Domain | 2026-10-23 |
| Wikidata: individual cats (instance of Q146) | Labels and short descriptions of notable individual cats, shown as "famous namesake" notes (29 names). | CC0 1.0 | 2026-10-23 |
The City of Seattle publishes the pet license dataset as public domain, so no attribution is required, but we're happy to credit it. Wikidata's structured data is released under CC0. Thank you to both.
How the list is built
- Download. A script fetches the latest Seattle pet license CSV and keeps only cats. It normalizes capitalization, drops entries with digits or symbols, and removes rude or placeholder names using a blocklist.
- Curate. Our editors pick names from that list, tag each one (gender, coat, personality, vibe, origin) and write a one-line meaning from scratch, kept short and friendly.
- Fill gaps. A small number of names that weren't in the records were added by our editors. Those still show 0 of 12,782 Seattle cats, and they are also labelled "Editor's pick".
- Match famous cats. Where a name matches a notable cat on Wikidata, we show that cat as a "famous namesake" and link the Wikipedia article when the item has one. Vague descriptions are skipped.
The current list
981 names in total: 900 found in the Seattle records and 81editor's picks. Names are curated in batches, each recorded with its sources and date:
| Batch | Names | In Seattle records | Editor's picks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01-popular | 143 | 143 | 0 |
| 02-coats | 107 | 93 | 14 |
| 03-japanese | 69 | 52 | 17 |
| 04-funny-cute | 109 | 96 | 13 |
| 05-unique-and-classic | 221 | 184 | 37 |
| 06-cute-seattle | 177 | 177 | 0 |
| 07-funny-seattle | 155 | 155 | 0 |
What the numbers on each name mean
“12 of 12,782 Seattle cats” means twelve licenses in this snapshot use that exact spelling. Rank 1 is the most common spelling. Tied names share the best rank. Percentile is the share of the5,870 recorded names with a strictly lower count, shown to one decimal and capped at 99.9 so the top name is not 100. A spelling with no licenses is “0 of 12,782” and “Not in the 5,870 recorded names”. It is one city, not a world ranking.
Coat, gender, and theme tags are ours. Do not read a table of “boy” or “black” names as something Seattle recorded about the cat.
Japanese readings
Names tagged Japanese include a kana reading, a kanji when the dictionary entry has one, and a short gloss. Those come from JMdict via Jisho. The JMdict/EDICT files are the property of the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group and are used in conformance with the Group’s licence. This site stores a short gloss, not the dictionary. A name stays on the Japanese page only when the reading matches. The Anicom and iPet figures on that page are cited there and are not part of this dataset.
Privacy
This site has no accounts, no analytics and no ad trackers. Names you save stay in this browser. Copying a shortlist link puts those name slugs in the URL. Opening that link does not replace the shortlist on the device.
Corrections
Spotted a wrong meaning or a name that shouldn't be here? The whole dataset is plain text in ourGitHub repository. Open an issue and we'll fix it.