The United States' largest pet insurer, Veterinary Pet Insurance (VPI), releases annual rankings of its customers' most popular cat names and dog names. The 2010 list (based on information from 2009 and released in January 2010) was gathered from 475,000 policies. Curtis Steinhoff, senior director of corporate communications for VPI, attributed the popularity of "Bella" (No. 3 on the cat list but No. 1 for dogs) on the 2010 list as probably having "something to do with Bella being the name of the heroine in a certain vampire book/film series that's pretty popular these days."
In 2009, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that according to government databases, the three most popular cat names in that city were, in order, Kitty, Tiger and Max. In 2004, the same newspaper reported differently based on information from the Cook County Department of Animal Control. The Sun-Times reported in 1987 that the same Cook County department had checked its database of 27,863 cats that had been vaccinated from 1984 through 1986 and found yet different results.
Popular cat names in United States:
| Source | VPI 2010 | VPI 2009 | VPI 2008 | VPI 2006 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Max | Max | Max | Max |
| 2 | Chloe | Chloe | Chloe | Tigger |
| 3 | Bella | Tigger | Lucy | Smokey |
| 4 | Oliver | Tiger | Tigger | Tiger |
| 5 | Tiger | Lucy | Tiger | Chloe |
| 6 | Smokey | Smokey | Smokey | Shadow |
| 7 | Tigger | Oliver | Oliver | Lucy |
| 8 | Lucy | Bella | Bella | Angel |
| 9 | Shadow | Shadow | Sophie | Oliver |
| 10 | Angel | Charlie | Princess | Simba |
