PupCensus

Dog name · New York City

Sam

345 licensed New York dogs are called Sam, which makes it the 127th most common dog name in the city. Dogs called Sam are almost always male. The name is now 3.3x less common than it was fifteen years ago.

345Licensed New York dogs called Sam
#127Rank among all dog names in the city
2005Peak year, by the dog’s year of birth
11%Of Sams are female

Is Sam getting more or less popular?

0 20 40 2005: 30.6 per 10,000 2006: 16.3 per 10,000 2007: 28.1 per 10,000 2008: 27.4 per 10,000 2009: 22.1 per 10,000 2010: 18.6 per 10,000 2011: 10.1 per 10,000 2012: 13.7 per 10,000 2013: 9.8 per 10,000 2014: 12.2 per 10,000 2015: 12.5 per 10,000 2016: 8.9 per 10,000 2017: 13.4 per 10,000 2018: 4.9 per 10,000 2019: 8.3 per 10,000 2020: 6.6 per 10,000 2021: 4.3 per 10,000 2022: 5 per 10,000 2023: 6.6 per 10,000 20052010201520202023
Dogs called Sam, per 10,000, by the dog’s year of birth

Among dogs born in 2005, 30.6 in every 10,000 licensed New York dogs were called Sam. For dogs born in 2023 it was 6.6. The name peaked with the 2005 litters.

Where Sam is a New Dorp name

Sam is 3.2x more common in New Dorp than across the city as a whole.

  • New DorpStaten Island 36.5
  • Brighton BeachBrooklyn 26.5
  • WoodsideQueens 25.7
  • Sheepshead BayBrooklyn 24.8
  • Midtown EastManhattan 24.2
  • Park SlopeBrooklyn 23.5

dogs called Sam per 10,000 dogs in that ZIP code

Only ZIP codes with at least 1,500 licensed dogs are compared, so a small neighbourhood cannot produce a large number by accident.

What sort of dog gets called Sam?

Labrador Retriever 33Shih Tzu 25Yorkshire Terrier 13Chihuahua 13German Shepherd Dog 11Jack Russell Terrier 11
About these numbers

This comes from dog licence records, not from a count of all dogs. The New York City health department estimates that around 80% of the city’s dogs are unlicensed, so these figures describe licensed dogs only. Rates are shown per 10,000 licensed dogs so that neighbourhoods and years can be compared fairly, but a neighbourhood where fewer people license their dogs may still be represented differently from one where more people do. Records are as supplied by the city and are not corrected for owner error.

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