NYC's Dog Name Database Will Keep You Occupied For A Long, Long Time

You can't have a dog in New York City​ without a license — that's the law, and the law can be a real bummer. In this case, however, bureaucratic red tape has produced something incredible: a searchable dataset of all the registered dog names in the city.

Enter a name and the site will tell you how many NYC dogs share it: for instance, "Buddy" is predictably common while there's only one dog named "Arfy" in the five boroughs.

You can also just let your cursor wander over the interactive bubble cloud, where names are grouped by similarity. That's how we found gems you wouldn't ever think to search for: ultra-rare, totally "normal" dog names like "Trousers" (1 dog), "Bonez" (1 dog), "Benzo" (3 dogs), "Zomboard" (1 dog), "Ramen" (2 dogs), and "Piffington" (1 cool dog).

So take it for a spin, type in some nonsense or swear words (as we all do), and settle some weird debates. You know, like:

• Prince (328 dogs) vs. Bowie (47 dogs)
• Piccolo (9 dogs) vs. Goku (3 dogs)
• Chocolate (56 dogs) vs. Vanilla (15 dogs)
• Corona (6 dogs) vs. Budweiser (2 dogs)
• Peace (2 dogs) vs. Crime (1 dog)
• Cookie (328 dogs) vs. Biscuit (95 dogs)
• Sherlock (35 dogs) vs. Columbo (3 dogs)
• Beyonce (3 dogs) vs. Adele (3 dogs, TIE)
• Bees (1 dog) vs. Beads (no dogs)
• Boobie (7 dogs) vs. Booby (1 dog)
• Salsa (8 dogs) vs. Guacamole (3 dogs)
• Bernie (46 dogs) vs. Hillary (6 dogs)
• Pee (8 dogs) vs. Poo (2 dogs)
• Pizza (4 dogs) vs. Sandwich (3 dogs)
• Jesus (2 dogs) vs. Satan (1 dog)

Yep. Someone named their poor, innocent dog Satan. Of course, three people in New York named their dog "Sandwich," so maybe we're just really bad at this.

[via Sarah Emerson at Motherboard]