Gnocchi, Tequila, Pickles. This is a list of delicious things but also a collection of very real dog names. While the majority of dogs in America are still called Max or Charlie, drool-worthy food names have been on the rise—and I, personally, am obsessed with this trend. It’s okay; I know a lot of you are reading this, eye-rolling, thinking that modern journalism has gone down the drain, and muttering to yourself that naming dogs after food isn’t a personality. To that I’m simply going to say…
…I don’t care. Long live us dog-whipped fools.
Don’t take my word for it: According to 2022 national data collected by the training and pet care website Rover.com, pet names inspired by foods and drinks are skyrocketing. Hotpot’s traction grew the most (up a wild 1,085%), followed by Sashimi (up 785%), Pastrami (up 485%), and Yerba (also up 485%). Meanwhile, Oreo and Cookie remain the most common edible names.
I have a theory on why this is happening. Existentially distressed millennials (like me), who are more likely to delay traditional milestones like marriage and homeownership, are probably filling the emotional void with their fur children—and their meals. So a dog named after a favorite food is sort of like a double-dopamine hit. (For the record, I don’t have a dog but if I did it would be a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever called Gravlax, or Lox for short.)
Also, unless you’re a celebrity, you can’t dub your human kid Cucumber without scarring them for life. “Naming a dog is the only acceptable time to call someone you love something totally absurd,” says Kayla Abe, the 29-year-old co-owner of Shuggie’s pizza joint in San Francisco. She adopted her Olde English Bulldogge, Beef, a couple years ago and felt the name was a perfect fit for her chunky new dog. “We wanted something unpretentious, something good and honest, something like…Beef,” she tells me.
For one pet owner, meeting a rescue already named after a favorite food sealed the deal. Queso, a bouncy Pomeranian with a ridiculous grin and sizable Instagram following, will also answer to “Mr. Cheese, Cheese Dog, and Quesarito,” says Sarah McVey, his 33-year-old human who lives in Prairie Village, Kansas. She adopted Queso from a kill shelter back in 2016, and felt his original name was fate. McVey and her husband already hosted an annual dip party and love the Tex-Mex staple. “I honestly can’t think of a better name for his sassy and spicy personality,” she says.
Dogs might also be named after foods because their owners feel the desire to eat them. It’s part of a phenomenon called “cute aggression,” which explains the compulsion to nibble on pets or babies. Adorableness engenders “bizarre, intense displays toward tiny, helpless beings” that might also remind us to take care of them, explains Atlantic staff writer Amanda Mull. I get it: I used to embarrass myself by burying my face in the neck rolls of my pooch nephew Chuck, a big-ass golden Labrador who also goes by nicknames such as the Big Bread and Chonky Cheese, and imagining what it would be like to take a bite. I do the same thing with my dog niece, Lasagna Ricotta—Zanya, when she’s being a good girl—who has a long, skinny tail we all refer to as her asparagus.
Sometimes dogs look like bagels. And when Jane Ahn’s dog, a Jindo-Shiba mix she adopted from Korea, curls up into a little ball, she thinks he resembles his name: Kimbap, which are cooked rice rolls wrapped in seaweed. It’s the dog’s favorite dish, and the name choice was a nod to Jane’s (and Kimbap’s) Korean heritage. Her dog is bilingual now, but he initially would only respond to his mother tongue and loses it for kimchi. “He’s Korean as fuck,” says the 29-year-old designer from Los Angeles. “I always joke that’s why we’re so connected.”
A novelty food name can be a huge part of a dog’s appeal, its je ne sais quoi. Beef, the Olde English Bulldogge from San Francisco, is a real stud, I’ll be honest. But Abe told me that customers at the pie shop “flipped out” even more when they learned his name. They became so (understandably) infatuated with Beef—who would greet people with his paws up on the bar—that he needed a bit of a timeout back of house, in the office. “It was too much fame too fast,” said Abe. Hopefully this article won’t add to the stress in Beef’s life, but Abe told me on the phone that our conversation had at least inspired a new nickname: Bone Apple Beef.
Everyone seems to know a dog named after food or drink these days, but my coworker’s two-year-old son gets that it’s really not that complex. He’d named his toy dog, a tiny Leonberger with plastic chestnut fur and a black muzzle that looks like a chocolate-dipped cone, Sauce. When she asked him why he chose the condiment, his logic was refreshing: “Because.”