CH Soletrader Buddy Holly
GCHB CH King Arthur Van Foliny Home
CH Rocky Top’s Sundance Kid
CH Soletrader
Buddy Holly
GCHB CH King Arthur
Van Foliny Home
CH Rocky Top’s
Sundance Kid
CH Soletrader
Buddy Holly
CH Rocky Top’s
Sundance Kid
GCHB CH King Arthur
Van Foliny Home
King Arthur, Buddy Holly and the Sundance Kid have one thing in common: They’ve all been best in show.
Champion dogs have gathered in New York this week to compete at the 148th annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Breed standards are strict, but when it comes to names, almost anything goes.
A handful of rules and over a hundred years of tradition give show dog names a meaningful structure. Add a layer of pure whimsy, and you get names like Clussexx Three D Grinchy Glee, who won best in show in 2009.
Ever wonder what you might be called if you stepped in the ring? Tell us a little about yourself and find out your Westminster show name.
Registered dog names have two main parts: a breeder name, which is like a family name, and a given name to specific to a dog. The registered name is often bookended by titles the dog has earned.
The first part of a dog’s registered name is usually based on the breeding kennel where they were born. They’ll share that name with every other dog from the breeder. Some names reference the kennel’s origin: breeder Beverly Conroy uses “Amour,” meaning love, because her first show dog was a 35th anniversary present from her husband.
Other breeders take a less sentimental approach. Gregory Wessel, who breeds golden retrievers and Belgian sheepdogs, named his kennel Winterset after a subdivision next door to his home in Baltimore.
“The huge sign out front said Winterset,” said Wessel. “I thought I’d just copy it and let people know where we are.”
Next is the dog’s given name. Breeders often use a common word, letter or theme to name their puppies. A litter might be named after song titles, racehorses or flowers. Chris Maxka, who breeds basenjis under the name SunDiata, named a litter of puppies after Beatles songs.
Dogs don’t go by their full registered names. Remember the puppies named after Beatles songs? Their friends call them Paul, George and Ringo.
“Not every pet is a show dog, but every show dog is a pet,” said Donald Sturz, president of the Westminster Kennel Club. And pets need a name for everyday that fits alongside a command like sit or fetch.
These nicknames — also known as call names — can be related to registered names, but they don’t have to be. Whiskey is a natural call name for whippet GCHG Pinnacle Tennessee Whiskey, and Trumpet makes sense for bloodhound GCHB Flessner’s Toot My Own Horn.
But call names don’t have to bear any resemblance to registered names. The 2012 winner of the working group goes by the Fifinator, but is registered as GCHP Protocol’s Veni Vidi Vici CA DN MX MXB MXJ MXJB ROM BFL-1 LC-11D.
Sometimes, those names evolve as a dog’s personality reveals itself. GCHS CH Big Country’s The World’s Most Dangerous Man, a cane corso making his debut at Westminster this year, started out with the call name Shamrock after professional wrestler Ken Shamrock. That transformed into Handsome Hammy as he grew to be “a goofball” and “absolute ham bone,” says his owner Jennifer Thomason.
But there are a still a few rules for names registered with the American Kennel Club (AKC): no profanity, no derogatory words and no unearned titles (like champion). The name can’t just be a breed, either — as fun as it would be to name a chihuahua Doberman, additional words are required. At least one dog, a setter with the given name the Hound of Rocky Top, has done just that.
Some owners and breeders do seem to delight in skirting the rules about profanity with given names like One Hail Of A Man and Sexy Son Of A Duck.
The only other rules are logistical.
Names have to be under 50 characters, and those over 36 come with a $10 fee. The AKC doesn’t have any philosophical attachment to the number 36 — it’s just the number of characters its software programs could handle in the 1980s.
Titles don’t count toward the limit, which is lucky for Bixby’s Roger Dodger, one of the most decorated dogs at Westminster last year. The agility dog’s name includes a staggering 37 abbreviations. Many of those abbreviations cover multiple titles. All in all, he has 117 titles, including obedience, rally, flyball, scent work, barn hun and more. That’s sort of like a human with seven PhDs, a medical degree, two MBAs and a law degree who became a certified public accountant in their spare time.
Registered names also have to be unique — or at least, unique-ish. The AKC will only register 37 dogs of a particular breed with the same name at any given time. There can be 37 Dalmatians registered as Spot, but the 38th will have to add on extra letters or numbers.
Why 37? That’s a mystery, even to the AKC archivists. Jill Zapadinsky, director of registration customer support at the AKC, suspects the limit is to encourage fun, unique names, but the origin of 37 remains shrouded in mystery.
Fun dog names aren’t an invention of the modern age. They’re as old as Westminster Kennel Club itself. Westminster awarded best in show in 1911 to a Scottish terrier named Tickle Em Jock, followed by CH Boxwood Barkentine in 1922 and CH Flornell Spicy Bit of Halleston in 1934.
In recent years, Sturz says, he has seen more dogs with human names, like his own Pekingese CH Pequest Fiona. He ascribes the trend to online baby name lists. However, the best way to guess a dog’s age is to check for the revolving door of pop culture references.
GCH CH Bazinga A Storm Of Swords, for instance, was born during the sixth season of “The Big Bang Theory” and right before the third season of “Game of Thrones.” GCHB CH Dobhran’s Alexa Play Some Music could only be a dog from the era of smart speakers.
Header images of CH Soletrader Buddy Holly and GCHB King Arthur Van Foliny Home are by Peter Fisher and Angus Mordant of the Washington Post, respectively. The header image of CH Rocky Top’s Sundance Kid is courtesy of the Westminster Kennel Club.
To create a formula for and list of potential show dog names, The Washington Post interviewed officials from the American Kennel Club and Westminster Kennel Club and reviewed the registered names of dogs entered into the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show from 1998 to 2017, best in group winners at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show from 1930-2023 and best in breed winners at the AKC National Championship from 2017 to 2023.
Mischievous, silly reporter Alyssa Fowers payed the extra $10 to be registered as CH Virginia Key’s Always Read The Documentation FTN. Energetically mischievous and silly editor Kate Rabinowitz is also known as CH Pumpernickel Fetch the Bolt Cutters HX.
