Royal pet names: 80 names for dogs and cats from kings, queens and courts

Royal names make cute pet names with a real story behind them. Every name in this guide belonged to a real royal pet, a real ruler, a royal title or a royal place, and each one comes with a short reason and a named source. You will find royal dog names from Queen Victoria's kennels and Queen Elizabeth II's corgis, royal cat names from ancient Egypt, and names of kings and queens from India and Europe.

What are the royal dogs' names?

The Royal Family's website and the Royal Collection Trust, which cares for the British royal art collection, record the names of many royal dogs. The dogs of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert have their own guide, Queen Victoria and her dogs.

From Queen Victoria's time:

• Dash. Victoria's spaniel. The Royal Family's website says her mother gave her a portrait of Dash for her 17th birthday.
• Eos. Prince Albert's greyhound, who came to England with him in 1840 and joined the couple on their honeymoon.
• Hector and Nero. Edwin Landseer painted Hector, a grey Spanish deerhound, and Nero, a black greyhound, beside Dash.
• Noble. Victoria owned several collies with this name. When Noble IV died in 1887, she wrote that she had lost "a real friend".
• Sharp. Her favourite collie. A photograph of Sharp with the Queen was sold to the public like a postcard.
• Deckel and Waldman. Deckel, who arrived from Germany in 1845, was the first dachshund she grew fond of. Waldman VI later became known as her favourite dachshund.
• Marco and Turi. Two of her Pomeranians. Marco was photographed at the Royal Kennels in Windsor in 1890, and Turi joined her in 1893.
• Vic, Paul and Princess. Three of her dogs. The Royal Collection Trust says an 1885 painting of a kitten with three dogs is probably the picture recorded at Osborne in 1886 as a cat with Paul, Vic and Princess. Vic was the fox terrier.

From later kings and queens:

• Caesar. King Edward VII's terrier went with him everywhere and walked behind his coffin in 1910.
• Jack. Edward VII's favourite Irish terrier.
• Skippy. A terrier from Battersea Dogs Home. The Royal Collection Trust says Prince Leopold was the first royal to adopt a dog from the home.
• Heather, Happy, Snip and Bob. King George V's first dog was Heather, a collie. Happy, Snip and Bob were three of his terriers.
• Dookie and Jane. The first royal corgis, from 1933.
• Crackers and Carol. Jane's puppies, born in 1938. Crackers lived to the age of 13.
• Susan. Princess Elizabeth's corgi for her eighteenth birthday in 1944. Every corgi she bred later came from Susan.
• Beth and Bluebell. Two dogs the Duchess of Cornwall adopted from Battersea.
• Fino and Tiny. Two dogs painted by George Stubbs in 1791. George IV acquired the painting while he was Prince of Wales.

From Prussia: Biche, Alcmène, Thisbe, Superbe and Pax were Italian greyhounds of Frederick the Great. The Deutsches Tierärzteblatt, a German veterinary journal, says they are buried on the terrace at Sanssouci, next to the king. More of these stories are in royal dogs in history.

Royal cat names

The royal records used in this guide name few cats, so these royal cat names come from other places.

• Queen. International Cat Care, a cat welfare charity, uses the word queens for female cats that have not been neutered.
• Miit. The Egyptian word for cat. A chief curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art said Miit was a popular name for girls in ancient Egypt.

Every name in the sections below also works for a cat. The painting of Queen Victoria's kitten, and other palace cats, are in royal cats in history.

Names of rulers and queens from India

The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London gives the names and titles of the Mughal emperors:

• Babur. He founded the Mughal dynasty in 1526.
• Humayun. Babur's son, who won back his lands more than 16 years after losing them.
• Akbar. He became emperor in 1556, at the age of 13.
• Jahangir. A title meaning "World Seizer", taken by Akbar's son Salim.
• Nur Jahan. "Light of the World", the title Jahangir gave his wife. She was the only Mughal queen to have coins issued in her name.
• Shah Jahan. He became emperor in 1628, and was painted holding the jewels he loved.
• Mumtaz. Mumtaz Mahal was the title of Shah Jahan's wife. He built the Taj Mahal as her tomb.

South and west India add more:

• Rajaraja. Encyclopaedia Britannica says this Chola king reigned from 985 to 1014 and built the great temple at Thanjavur.
• Rajendra. Rajaraja's son, whose army reached the Ganges River in 1023.
• Shivaji. Britannica says he founded the Maratha kingdom.
• Tarabai. Britannica says her son, Shivaji II, ruled with her support.

The painting of these courts is covered in what is Mughal painting, the Chola dynasty and Shivaji and the Maratha kings.

Names of kings and queens from Europe

• Victoria. Britannica says she was queen of the United Kingdom from 1837 to 1901.
• Albert. Victoria married him on 10 February 1840.
• Alfred, Arthur, Leopold, Alice, Helena, Louise and Beatrice. Seven of their nine children, as Britannica lists them.
• Elizabeth and Margaret. The Royal Collection Trust says the first royal corgis came in 1933 for these two princesses.
• Charles. Charles I made the King Charles spaniel popular in the 17th century.
• Edward. Edward VII was fond of terriers.
• George. George VI, a keen amateur photographer, took many photographs of his daughters with the family's dogs.
• Frederick. Frederick the Great kept Italian greyhounds.

Royal titles as pet names

A royal title can also be a pet's name. The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary gives these meanings:

Name	Meaning
Raja	An Indian king or prince who ruled a state in the past, from the Sanskrit rājan, "king"
Rani	An Indian queen, from the Sanskrit rājñī, the female form of rājan
Maharaja	An Indian king, from mahā, "great", and rājan
Maharani	The wife of a maharaja, from mahā and rājñī
Duke	A nobleman of the highest rank, from the Latin dux, "leader"
Duchess	The wife of a duke, or a woman with the rank of a duke

One more title comes from Indian history. Shivaji was crowned Chhatrapati at Raigad Fort on 6 June 1674, according to Incredible India, the Government of India's tourism site. The nine Indian court portrait styles are set out in Indian royal pet portraits. The Indian titles are explained in what does Maharaja mean.

Names from palaces and places

• Sanssouci. The Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation says the name means "without a care". Frederick the Great liked to retreat there with his dogs.
• Windsor. The royal kennels built in Windsor Home Park in the early 1840s held up to a hundred dogs.
• Sandringham. The Royal Collection Trust says royal dog breeding went on there as well.
• Balmoral. Noble IV died at Balmoral on 18 September 1887.
• Osborne. Queen Victoria died at Osborne, on the Isle of Wight, in 1901.
• Kensington. She was born at Kensington Palace in 1819.
• Agra. The city where Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal.
• Thanjavur. The city of Rajaraja's temple.
• Raigad. Shivaji's capital, where he was crowned and where he died in 1680.
• Mysore. Karnataka Tourism says Mysore painting began in the courts of the Wodeyar dynasty. The style has its own guide: what is Mysore painting.
• Patiala. The city grew around Qila Mubarak, a fort that Ala Singh began building in 1763, says the Patiala district government. Read more in the Maharajas of Patiala.

Match the name to a portrait style

A royal name pairs well with a royal portrait. Purrealism has 15 royal portrait styles. A cat called Nur Jahan or Akbar could wear the Mughal Emperor style, which the gallery shows on a grey cat in a jewelled crown and pearls. A female dog called Rani suits the Maharani style, shown there on a white and ginger cat in a green and gold gown. A black dog called Mysore suits the Mysore Royal style, shown on a black labrador in a saffron turban.

Some names have a style with no gallery example yet. A dog called Shivaji could wear the Maratha King style, a dog called Rajaraja the Chola Warrior style, and a spaniel called Dash the Victorian Noble style. Choose any of these in the portrait studio and add one clear photo of your pet, up to 5 MB.