Human Name or Dog Name? Find the Perfect Fit Now

Alright, so today I'm gonna walk you through this little experiment I did comparing dog names and human names. It all started because I was kinda bored, and my friend was arguing that dog names are becoming more like human names. I was skeptical, so I figured, why not test it out?

First off, I needed data. I spent like, an hour just googling "popular dog names 2024" and "popular baby names 2024". I ended up grabbing lists from a bunch of different sites, you know, those baby name websites and pet care websites. I copy-pasted everything into a big ol' spreadsheet. It was messy, believe me.

Then came the fun part – cleaning the data. This was a pain. There were duplicates everywhere, different capitalization, and some names were just… weird. I used the spreadsheet’s remove duplicates function like a million times. I also made everything lowercase to keep things consistent.

Okay, so with my cleaned-up lists, I started comparing. I basically just went through each dog name and checked if it was also on the human name list. I used a simple "IF" formula in the spreadsheet to flag any matches. It was tedious, but hey, gotta do what you gotta do.

The Results? Well, it was actually kinda surprising. There was definitely some overlap. Names like Charlie, Max, Bella, and Lucy were common on both lists. My friend was kinda right, I guess. But there were also tons of dog names that were clearly just… dog names. Like, you're not gonna name your kid Fido, right?

I also tried grouping the names into categories. Like, are there more "human-sounding" names for small dogs versus big dogs? Or are girl dog names more likely to be human names than boy dog names? It got pretty granular. I used pivot tables to slice and dice the data. Pivot tables are your friend, trust me.

• Boy Dog Names: Lots of classic dog names like Buddy, Cooper, and Rocky. Some overlap with human names, but fewer than the girls.
• Girl Dog Names: More human-sounding names like Bella, Lucy, Sadie, and Chloe. Big overlap with baby names.
• Small Dogs: Seemed to have cuter, sometimes more "human" names, regardless of gender. Think names that end in "-ie" or "-y."
• Big Dogs: More "tough" or traditional dog names. Less human-sounding, generally.

I even made a little chart visualizing the overlap. It wasn't fancy, just a simple bar graph showing the percentage of dog names that also appeared on the human name list. Visuals make everything better, even if it's just for your own understanding.

So, what did I learn? Dog names are definitely getting more human-like, but there's still a clear distinction. And people have very different naming conventions for different types of dogs. It was a fun little data project to kill some time. Plus, now I have a better idea of what not to name my future dog.

Key Takeaways

• Data cleaning is always the most time-consuming part.
• Spreadsheets are your best friend for basic data analysis.
• Even a simple project can give you some interesting insights.

Hope you found that interesting! Let me know if you have any other data experiments I should try out!