The crypto craze is going to the dogs.
Pet owners are actually naming their dogs “Doge” and their cats “Bitcoin,” according to Rover.com’s 2021 Most Popular Pet Names and Trends of the Year report.
The online pet marketplace has published an annual report on trending pet names for the past nine years. And 2021 marks the first time that Bitcoin BTCUSD, -0.17% made the list; it’s apparently a trending name for cats.
What’s more, dogs named after Tesla TSLA, -4.35% CEO Elon Musk and Amazon AMZN, -1.81% founder Jeff Bezos also made the list for the first time — and cats named “Elon” in particular were trending up by 343% over last year.
It’s been a big year for Dogecoin DOGEUSD, -0.14% — the meme cryptocurrency that started as a joke, but is up 4,520.54% for the year (although it’s down around 4% over the past five days.) So it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that doggos named “Doge” were up 106% this year, according to Rover.com.
Many pet parents took inspiration from tech companies, in fact. Canines named “Amazon” jumped 363%; dogs named after Apple’s AAPL, -0.32% virtual assistant “Siri” were up 131%; while pups named after Alphabet’s GOOGL, -0.60% ”Google” were up 63% compared to 2020.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has also seen dogs named “Fauci” go up 270% in 2021, as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, has fetched plenty of screen time over a ruff two years. Remote work and remote schooling have also likely fueled Zoom ZM, -6.48% to trend up 443% as a dog name this year, while some folks have even named their dogs “Covid,” which is up 35%.
Some honorable mentions for pandemic pet monikers also include the vaccine-inspired “Pfizer” PFE, +1.77%, along with “Vax” and “Dolly Parton,” who made headlines earlier in the pandemic for donating $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which helped develop the Moderna MRNA, -11.87% vaccine.
So what about the overall most popular pet names that aren’t super-trendy? The top female dog names for 2021 are Bella, Luna, Lucy, Daisy and Zoe, while the top male dog names are Max, Charlie, Cooper, Buddy and Milo.
Check out the full report here.
Shares of Apple Inc. undefined stuck out like a sore thumb Tuesday, as they rallied 2.0% toward a record close in afternoon trading, to be the only one of 30 Dow Jones Industrial Average undefined components to be gaining ground. Meanwhile, the Dow tumbled 635 points, or 1.8%, and was now 5.3% below its Nov. 8 record close of 36,432.22. Apple's stock has run up 9.1% in November, the biggest monthly gain since it rallied 9.9% in June, and compared with the Dow's monthly decline of 3.7%. Apple's stock is the best Dow performer this month, and one of just five Dow stocks that have gained ground in November, with Home Depot Inc.'s stock undefined second best with an 8.5% monthly gain. Meanwhile, Merck & Co. Inc.'s stock undefined was the Dow's worst monthly performer with a 15.5% tumble.
Nicole Lyn Pesce is a social media reporter at MarketWatch and is based in New York.
