What’s your dog’s name? Not the name listed on their vet records—but the one that slips out when they steal a sock or tilt their head just right.
One Redditor said their pup’s name spiraled from “Big Stink” to “Stinky Winky,” “Moo a Wink,” and eventually “Stoop a Wink.”
These playful nicknames might seem like nonsense, but linguists say they reflect deeper patterns in how humans form bonds, express affection, and play with language. As pets have transitioned from outdoor workers to indoor companions, the way we talk to—and about—them has also changed.
Names like Ozzy Roxy (pictured here) often follow linguistic patterns seen in child-directed speech—repetition, rhythm, and exaggerated vowels—that help strengthen social bonds and emotional attachment.
Pet nicknames are a form of linguistic play
Scientific literature has shown that nicknames are a powerful way humans express affection and form connections. “The nicknaming of dogs could also be viewed as a form of creative verbal play,” says Cynthia Gordon, professor of sociolinguistics at Georgetown University. “Play builds solidarity among people, and playing with dogs’ nicknames is a way to include dogs in the fun and feeling of connection.”
Her own dog’s name, Archie, has evolved from Dogface, Dogus, Dogus Maximoose, Snoof, Lil Snoof, Monsieur Le Snoof, to, finally, Señor Snoofioso. While pets might be merrily oblivious to their ever more absurd monikers, they’re still likely to respond based on your playful tone of voice. “They’re very cued to paralinguistics,” points out Gordon (the non-lexical parts of communication).
Brain rhythm research also supports this. Humans instinctively slow down and exaggerate pitch when speaking to pets, matching the slower delta‑band speech dogs favor, making “Snoofioso” more effective than a flat “Snoof”
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Why do we give pets silly nicknames
A 1999 study found that nicknaming “reveals considerable enjoyment in creating new words which experiment with patterns of sound.” The patterns included alliteration, assonance—similar sounds in two syllables that are close together in rhythm, and rhyme. Beyond the purely phonetic, nicknames can also play with meaning, for example, through puns or juxtaposing concepts.
And while nicknames feel personal to us, there’s evidence that we might be following covert linguistic rules. The authors of the study noted that the patterns of language play involved are reminiscent of nursery rhymes, as well as baby talk and childhood language games, evoking a time when language was used for its own sake and brought joy.
The paper highlighted a pig-latin name game from South African playgrounds, with a rhyme that doesn’t sound a million miles away from how our pet names tend to evolve: “David the Pavid the Rick stick stavid; Lindy the pindy the rix stix stindy.”
Researchers suggested this kind of language play hints at a “vestigial trace of sound symbolism”—a built-in human tendency to associate certain sounds with meaning.
Gordon notes that we tend to associate certain sounds with specific characteristics, as in the Kiki vs. Bouba thought experiment. “So the sound ‘i’, like sniff, is small,” she says. “‘Oo’ is like big and chunky. This is why I call my dog Snoofioso.”
Humor is another significant driver of nickname evolution, especially the kind of humor we enjoy as kids. “Scatological types of things,” says Nancy Bell, linguistics professor at Washington State University, highlighting the ever-popular “stinky.”
Bell recalls her old dog Tinker Bell. “We just called her Tink or Tinker, Tinker doodle, and then ‘Stinker doodle’ was a really obvious one for a million-year-old dog.” (Another Redditor admitted their Chihuahua-Pomeranian’s official name Pepper devolved over time to “PeePoo,” “because it’s funny.”)
It’s not just pets, kids and romantic partners accumulate nicknames too. A popular Swedish idiom, “Kärt barn har många namn,” translates to “A dear child has many names,” says Katharina Leibring, a research archivist at the Institute for Dialectology at Uppsala University.
The difference is that, at a certain age, a child may begin to push back against the more avant-garde experimentalism or embarrassing aliases. Pets, on the other hand, “can’t protest our name-creating … which can make us even bolder,” says Leibring.
Sogopecan’s elaborate name reflects a broader trend: many pet names now mimic the cadence and complexity of human names. Linguists say these syllable-rich creations often emerge from private family speech patterns known as ‘familects.’
Different languages shape pet naming in different ways
English pet names may be particularly prone to mutation. Other languages, like Italian, have a rich system of “diminutives”—suffixes like -ino, -etto, or -uccio, which signal smallness or affection. In English, we mostly get by with “-y” or “-ie”, as in “walkies” or “shoesies.”
A recent study found that Italian pet owners made significantly more frequent use of these diminutives, leading the researchers to suggest that English speakers may need to explore alternative avenues to express empathy.
“Because Italian offers so many built-in ‘cute’ modifications, speakers can easily coin affectionate variants without needing to rely on more arbitrary changes, as often happens in English,” says lead author Elisa Mattiello, associate professor of English language and linguistics at the University of Pisa. “This could indeed result in a less random evolution of Italian pet names.”
Studies suggest that differences in breed, fur texture, and body shape often influence how owners modify names—using rhythm, rhyme, or texture-inspired cues to build a pet’s unique ‘name journey.’
Pet names are part of your family’s private language
For most of human history, animals served a mostly functional purpose—something their names reflected. Dogs had names related to guarding, hunting, or shepherding, says Leibring, who has investigated the history of pet names. When cats received a name at all, it might have been something onomatopoeic like “Meow.”
However, as the role of companion animals evolved, so did our approach to addressing them. The increasing urbanization of the mid-19th century drove dogs indoors, paving the way for the development of smaller breeds. Nowadays, pets are more part of the family than ever. Correspondingly, over the last 30 years, their names have become increasingly human.
For Gordon, bizarre pet naming is likely an offshoot of the broader phenomenon of familect: private jargon within families that sounds like gobbledygook to outsiders. “Oftentimes it emerges naturally,” she says. “Where a child mispronounces a word and the parents think it’s funny, and then for the rest of their lives, they pronounce ketchup as keppage, right?”
Language is a powerful tool for signaling in-group status, and pets can become a significant constituent of family lore and identity. Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, has studied how people “ventriloquize” pets—giving them voices in conversations with other humans.
Bosco Tinker’s wide-eyed gaze may be part of what shaped his name. Researchers say facial expressions can trigger high-pitched, vowel-heavy nicknames—part of a broader pattern where humans instinctively adjust speech to signal care and connection.
Tannen identified several motives for speaking to or for our pets, including buffering criticism toward a human member of the household by making it appear as if the pet was issuing the complaint. In one of Tannen’s examples, a mother gently chastised her son for not tidying up by imitating their dogs Tater and Rickie in a high-pitched voice: “We’re naughty, but we’re not as naughty as Jason, he’s naughtiest!”
Tannen discovered that dialoging with pets was often more about communication between human family members. Likewise, “I see pet naming as a very social thing,” says Bell. She recounts how she looked after a new puppy alone during the COVID-19 pandemic. “For the first three years of his life, he was just Mickey or Mick,” she says. After Bell remarried, Mickey quickly earned an abundance of fresh names from her and her partner, like Boogie, Boogie Boy, and Bug.
In the end, pet nicknames aren’t just cute—they’re linguistic time capsules, shaped by who’s in the room, how we speak to one another, and the private, playful dialects we build around love.