Most Popular Dog Names in Canada: Luna Wins Victoria by One Dog (and Toronto Comfortably)

Victoria's most popular dog name won by a single dog. In 2025 the city licensed 62 dogs called Luna and 61 called Charlie, and 19 of those Charlies were girls.

Toronto, which publishes its own licence data, has the same top two: Luna (549 dogs in 2025) and Charlie (491). Dog names, it turns out, are one of the few things Victoria and Toronto agree on.

The City of Victoria publishes its dog licences every year with names, breeds, coat colours and a count for each of its 12 neighbourhoods. That's enough to map which neighbourhood has the most dogs, which one is French bulldog country and how many dogs are named after a vampire. I added Toronto's names, Calgary's breed counts since 2021 and Edmonton's full pet licence list (yes, it includes bees) to see how BC's capital compares with the rest of Canada.

The map: Victoria's dogs by neighbourhood

Fairfield has the most licensed dogs in Victoria: 888 in 2025, about one in every 7 dogs in the city. But it's also one of the biggest neighbourhoods. Per square kilometre, Victoria West wins with about 481 dogs, then Downtown (379) and Fairfield (350). Burnside is the least doggy at about 157 per km².

The map opens on Downtown, because its signature breed is the most on-brand result in the whole data set: the French bulldog. Downtown has 18 of them, 2.9 times the breed's share across the city. Pomeranians come next on the over-represented list. Small dogs, small floor plans. My read is that this is what condo living looks like in dog form, though the data can't tell me who lives in an apartment.

A few that made me smile. Fairfield, next to Beacon Hill Park, is Jack Russell terrier territory (15 dogs, 2.2×). Gonzales goes for the cocker spaniel cross and Rockland, the neighbourhood of Craigdarroch Castle, for the german shepherd. Fernwood has a soft spot for pug crosses. Victoria West's pick is a photo finish: Chihuahuas edge out Australian shepherds by a hair (1.793× vs 1.791×).

But the signature breed is never the most common breed. Lab crosses or Labs top the list in 11 of the 12 neighbourhoods; North Park is the exception, where dogs registered as plain mixed breed come first. Count dogs registered as Lab or Lab cross together and they're 11% of all Victoria's licensed dogs, before counting the Lab mixes with other labels.

Switch to Multi-dog homes and Hillside/Quadra comes out on top: 18% of its dog-owning homes have two or more dogs, against 12% in James Bay. Citywide, 15% of the 5,198 homes with a licensed dog have more than one. Change since 2024 shows licensed dogs fell in 11 of 12 neighbourhoods; only North Park went up (175 to 176). The city's total fell 5.7%. A licence count isn't a dog census: it moves with how many owners renew, so I wouldn't read the drop as Victoria having fewer dogs.

Victoria's top dog names

Victoria's 6,068 licensed dogs share 2,592 different names, and 1,809 of those names belong to exactly one dog. So about 30% of the city's dogs have a name nobody else's dog has (as spelled on the licence). The other end is crowded with Lunas, Lucys and Bellas.

The girls' list reads like a baby-name list: Luna (62), Lucy (48), Bella (47), Daisy (42), Poppy (41). The boys' list leans older-gentleman: Charlie (42), Max (38), Finn (32), Murphy (27), Teddy (24), and further down Winston (21), George (18) and Gus (19). If you've read my BC baby names post, a few of these will look familiar.

Frankie is the name to watch. It's tied for #5 overall with 42 dogs, split almost evenly: 23 girls and 19 boys. In 2024 it was #9.

Victoria vs Toronto: same top two, different personalities

Toronto publishes its 200 most popular licensed dog names each year. In 2025, Luna led with 549 dogs, then Charlie (491), Bella, Coco and Milo. In 2020 Charlie was Toronto's #1 and Luna #2, so Luna has since overtaken Charlie there. In Victoria, Luna was already ahead in 2024 (68 to 67). Toronto's cats, for the record, also go by Luna more than anything else in 2025.

Where the two cities split is further down the list. I looked for names in Victoria's top 40 that sit at least 25 places lower in Toronto, and for Toronto top-20 names that sit at least 10 places lower in Victoria.

Victoria's personality is Poppy (#7 here, #33 in Toronto), Finn (#11 vs #46) and Frankie. Toronto's is Coco: #4 there with 342 dogs, but only #16 in Victoria. My read: Victoria names its dogs like it's naming a sailboat or a pub, Toronto like it's naming a handbag. I can't prove that, but the data doesn't argue with me either.

Halloween names, snack names and black dogs

With Halloween a week out, I went through Victoria's list for spooky names. These are my picks, not an official category, so treat the total as "at least". Shadow is the clear winner with 11 dogs. Then come the small but committed: 4 Boos, 3 Ravens, 3 dogs named after the Greek goddess of night, and one each of Dracula, Wednesday, Salem and Ghost. Count all 14 names in the chart, Pumpkin and Casper included, and that's 34 dogs dressed for Halloween all year.

Victoria also names a lot of dogs after trees and food. Willow (29), Hazel (13), Cedar (12) and Juniper (11) are about as West Coast as it gets; Cedar isn't even in Toronto's top 200. On the snack side, Pepper (20), Honey (16) and Peanut (14) are my favourites, with 7 Mochas and 5 Oreos for the coffee-and-cookie crowd.

For the Halloween photo: 725 of Victoria's licensed dogs are registered as black, 12% of the total, second only to gold and beige (1,145). Add black-and-white and black-and-tan and more than a third of the city's dogs come with built-in Halloween colours.

Breeds: Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton

Three cities, three ways of counting breeds, and one dog that wins everywhere: the Labrador. Victoria registers crosses separately, so its top two are Lab cross (431) and Lab (249). In Edmonton, 5,028 of 56,302 currently licensed dogs are listed as Labrador retrievers (9%). In Calgary's top-100 breed list, Labs had 9,257 licences in August 2026.

The Prairies like their working dogs: German shepherds are #2 in both Calgary and Edmonton, and border collies and Australian shepherds are close behind. Victoria's top 10 is mostly crosses (6 of 10), plus purebred Labs, golden retrievers, Chihuahuas and Havanese (tied for #10 with border collie crosses). Edmonton also lists 2,830 dogs as breed "UNKNOWN", which is either honesty or a lot of very mysterious dogs.

Edmonton's licence list is also the only one that goes past cats and dogs. Alongside its 56,302 dogs and 29,043 cats, the city had 143 hen licences, 97 for pigeons and 69 for bees when I pulled the data. A city that issues pet licences for bees is a city I respect.

Calgary's breed winners and losers since 2021

Calgary has published its top 100 breeds for most months since April 2021, which makes it the best data set I found for watching breed fashions change. Over those five-plus years, the top-100 total slipped from 90,443 licences to 82,460 (-9%), so a breed holding steady is actually gaining ground.

Among Calgary's bigger breeds (800+ licences in 2021), poodles are the big winners: miniature poodles +51% (from 1,818 to 2,747) and standard poodles +26%. Calgary lists dogs by their primary breed, so my guess is that some of those are doodles registered under the poodle half, though the data doesn't say. Cavalier King Charles spaniels (+38%), Bernese mountain dogs (+25%) and Australian shepherds (+21%) are up too.

The bichon frise is the big loser on that list: 3,014 licences in 2021, 1,504 now, -50%. Pugs (-36%), Boston terriers (-32%) and boxers (-33%) also dropped a lot. Even Labs lost 13% of their licences, though at 11% of the top 100 they're still Calgary's top dog by a wide margin.

Dogs and strata: what buyers should check

Victoria's Downtown French bulldogs are a reminder that a lot of city-centre dogs live in condos, and in BC a strata building can limit pets. If you're buying a condo or townhouse with a dog, or planning to get one, here's what I'd check before writing an offer.

EstateBlock's listings cover Greater Vancouver rather than Victoria, but the strata rules above are province-wide. If you're shopping with a dog, browse Vancouver townhouses or Vancouver condos and check each building's bylaws, or look at houses if you want no strata at all. For more data fun, my tree map of Canadian cities covers what your dog is sniffing on its walk, and the Vancouver 3-1-1 complaint map shows where animal complaints cluster.

How I did this

Victoria: the City of Victoria's Dog Licences 2025 and Dog Licences 2024 spreadsheets (open data), which give licensed dogs by neighbourhood (with sex and dogs per home), names by sex, breeds citywide and by neighbourhood, and coat colours. Dogs per km² use the area of each neighbourhood polygon in the city's boundary file. "Signature breed" is the named breed whose share in a neighbourhood is highest relative to its share citywide, among breeds with at least 9 dogs in that neighbourhood; generic labels like "mix" and "unknown" are skipped. Name ranks combine female and male dogs and ties share a rank. These are licensed dogs, not all dogs: unlicensed dogs aren't counted, and the count moves with renewals.

Toronto: Licensed Dog and Cat Names, which lists the top 200 dog and cat names each year with counts. I used 2025, the latest full year. Toronto doesn't split names by sex. Calgary: Top 100 Licensed Dog Breeds, published for most months since April 2021; I compared April 2021 with August 2026, the latest month. Edmonton: Pet Licenses by Neighbourhood, a snapshot of pets with a current licence (updated 2026-10-25). Breed is self-reported in every city.

The spooky, tree and snack name lists are my own picks. Nothing on this page is about people: the jokes are about dogs and their names. Strata rules come from the Schedule of Standard Bylaws and section 123 of BC's Strata Property Act. Data: City of Victoria Open Data Licence; Open Government Licences of Toronto, Calgary and Edmonton.