Stereotypic gender naming practices for american and Australian dogs and cats

Abstract

Pets are considered as part of the family in many households. As such, the names people give their pets ought to resemble the names they give their children in terms of sex-stereotypic phonological characteristics. A previous study indicated that this was true for Golden Retriever dogs. The present study determined 1) if such sex stereotyping was true for dogs in general, 2) also extended to cats, and 3) if the same phenomena held for both the United States and Australia. We compared the final written letter and final spoken phoneme in pet and human names, as well as the first and last consonants, and syllable lengths in their names. We found that people applied the same gender-related naming practices for pets that they used for both male and female children. The only difference we found between U.S. and Australian naming for pets was that Americans gave their pets names that were more characteristic of male names than female names. We concluded that Americans and Australians used the same masculine/feminine rules for naming their pets as they do for naming their children. Copyright 2007 by The American Name Society.