Names That Mean Cat, in the Languages That Actually Say It
Names that mean cat are the shortest possible route to a name that fits, because you are simply calling your cat what he is, in a language that makes it sound like a name. Neko is Japanese for cat. Paka is Swahili for cat. Kedi is Turkish for cat. Each one works perfectly on an actual cat and nobody at the vet's office needs the joke explained.
This page lists more than eighty names across four groups: the plain word for cat in over thirty languages, the affectionate kitty words that go with them, feline gods and folklore cats, and words that mean a specific kind of cat such as lion, tiger, or lynx. Every meaning here has been checked. A few popular picks that people assume mean cat but do not are collected at the end, because that mistake is very easy to make.
Names That Mean Cat, Language by Language
The most reliable names that mean cat are simply the everyday noun, borrowed straight. Below is that word in more than thirty languages, with a note where the language distinguishes a male cat from a female one.
| Name | Language | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Neko | Japanese | Written 猫; the standard word for cat |
| Mao | Mandarin Chinese | 猫, pronounced roughly mao with a level tone |
| Goyangi | Korean | 고양이; shortens well to Goya |
| Kucing | Malay and Indonesian | Pronounced roughly koo-ching |
| Pusa | Tagalog | The everyday Filipino word for cat |
| Meo | Vietnamese | Written mèo |
| Maew | Thai | Written แมว |
| Billi | Hindi and Urdu | बिल्ली; a female cat specifically |
| Poonai | Tamil | பூனை |
| Marjara | Sanskrit | मार्जार; formal and unusual |
| Gorbeh | Persian | گربه |
| Qitt | Arabic | قط; Bissa is the common colloquial word |
| Chatul | Hebrew | חתול |
| Paka | Swahili | Short, bright, and easy to call |
| Ikati | Zulu | Often shortened to Kati |
| Ologbo | Yoruba | The Yoruba word for cat |
| Kat | Dutch, Danish, Afrikaans | One blunt syllable |
| Katt | Swedish and Norwegian | Same word, doubled T |
| Kottur | Icelandic | Written köttur |
| Katze | German | Kater is the German for a tomcat |
| Chat | French | Chatte for a female |
| Gato | Spanish and Portuguese | Gata for a female |
| Gatto | Italian | Gattino for a kitten |
| Gat | Catalan | One syllable, hard ending |
| Pisica | Romanian | Written pisică |
| Kedi | Turkish | Bright and easy to shout |
| Kot | Polish and Russian | A male cat; Kotek is a kitten in Polish |
| Koshka | Russian | Кошка, a female cat |
| Kocka | Czech | Written kočka |
| Macka | Serbian, Croatian, Slovak | Written mačka |
| Macska | Hungarian | Pronounced roughly moch-ka |
| Kissa | Finnish | Long, soft, and very cat-friendly |
| Kass | Estonian | Blunt and excellent |
| Kate | Lithuanian | Written katė |
| Kakis | Latvian | Written kaķis |
| Katu | Basque | Unrelated to any of its neighbors |
| Cath | Welsh | Pronounced with a soft th |
| Cat | Irish and Scottish Gaelic | Spelled the same, said the same |
| Kath | Cornish | The Cornish form |
| Popoki | Hawaiian | Written pōpoki |
| Ngeru | Maori | One of the Maori words for cat |
| Kato | Esperanto | Constructed, but a real usable word |
| Felis | Latin | The genus name comes straight from it |
| Cattus | Late Latin | The ancestor of cat, chat, katze, and kot |
| Miw | Ancient Egyptian | The Egyptian word, and probably onomatopoeic |
| Ailouros | Ancient Greek | αἴλουρος; the root of the word ailurophile |
Miw is the best-kept secret on this list. It is roughly three thousand years old, it is one syllable, it sounds like the noise the animal makes, and almost nobody is using it.
Which Ones Work Best Out Loud
| Pick this | If you want |
|---|---|
| Neko, Kedi, Paka, Kissa | Two syllables and a bright ending |
| Kat, Kass, Gat, Miw | One blunt syllable that carries |
| Goyangi, Kucing, Macska | Something nobody else will have |
| Koshka, Kotek, Micio | Softness with a hard consonant inside |
Affectionate Kitty Words
Every language with cats also has a word for kitty, and those are often better names than the formal noun because they were built to be said fondly.
| Name | Language | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Minou | French | Kitty, a term of endearment |
| Micio | Italian | Kitty, said the way you would coo it |
| Michino | Italian | A small kitty |
| Kotek | Polish | Little cat, kitten |
| Kisu | Finnish | Kitty, from kissa |
| Gattino | Italian | Kitten |
| Gatito | Spanish | Kitten |
| Muning | Tagalog | The everyday call-name for a cat |
| Pisi | Turkish | The affectionate call word for a cat |
| Kitzy | Various | A general diminutive form |
Minou and Micio are the two most usable names on this page for a small, soft, indoor cat. Both are two syllables, both end bright, and both feel like something you would say in a food voice without effort.
Cat Gods and Folklore Cats
These do not translate as cat, but every one of them is a cat, or a deity shown as one. That is close enough to count and they carry far more weight than a plain noun.
| Name | Where from | Who or what |
|---|---|---|
| Bastet | Ancient Egypt | The goddess shown as a cat or a cat-headed woman |
| Bast | Ancient Egypt | The shorter form of the same name |
| Sekhmet | Ancient Egypt | A lioness-headed goddess, not a house cat |
| Mafdet | Ancient Egypt | An early protective deity shown in feline form |
| Freya | Norse | Her chariot is drawn by cats |
| Sith | Scottish and Irish folklore | From Cait Sith, the fairy cat |
| Bayun | Russian folklore | The story-telling cat of the old tales |
| Bakeneko | Japanese folklore | A cat that has become something else |
| Nekomata | Japanese folklore | A forked-tail cat spirit |
| Maneki | Japanese | From maneki-neko, the beckoning cat figurine |
| Li Shou | Chinese tradition | A cat spirit honored in old agricultural rites |
| Behemoth | Russian literature | The enormous black cat of a famous novel |
| Sphinx | Greek and Egyptian | A creature with a lion's body |
Bastet is the most popular name in this group by a wide margin and it deserves it. If you want the same idea without the crowd, Mafdet and Bayun are both wide open.
Words That Mean a Kind of Cat
Lion, tiger, leopard, and lynx are all cats, so names built from those words genuinely mean cat, just a larger and more alarming one. These suit a big cat, a loud cat, or a very small cat with delusions.
| Name | Language | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Leo | Latin | Lion |
| Leon | Greek and Spanish | Lion |
| Aslan | Turkish | Lion |
| Simba | Swahili | Lion |
| Ari | Hebrew | Lion; Aryeh is the fuller form |
| Asad | Arabic | Lion |
| Simha | Sanskrit | Lion; the source of Singh |
| Sher | Persian and Urdu | Lion, and often used for tiger too |
| Bagh | Hindi | Tiger |
| Tora | Japanese | Tiger, written 虎 |
| Hu | Mandarin Chinese | Tiger, written 虎 |
| Chui | Swahili | Leopard |
| Duma | Swahili | Cheetah |
| Puma | Quechua | The cat itself; the English word is borrowed whole |
| Jaguar | Tupi-Guarani | From yaguara |
| Ocelot | Nahuatl | From ocelotl |
| Caracal | Turkish | From karakulak, black ear |
| Lynx | Greek | The wild cat with the tufted ears |
| Serval | French, via Portuguese | The long-legged African cat |
| Panthera | Latin | The genus that holds lions and tigers |
Duma and Chui are the standouts. Both are short, both are easy to shout, and neither is common.
Names People Think Mean Cat But Do Not
This is the section that saves you an awkward conversation later. All of these are perfectly good cat names. None of them means cat.
- Felix means lucky or fortunate in Latin. It is a different word from feles, the Latin for cat, and the two are not related. The famous cartoon cat is why the association exists.
- Kitty is a nickname for Katherine, which has nothing to do with cats. The overlap is a happy accident of sound.
- Caitlin and Catalina are both forms of Katherine as well, not cat words.
- Cheshire is an English county. The grinning cat took the name from the place, not the other way around.
- Nala has no single agreed meaning, so anything you read confidently about it is worth treating carefully.
- Meow, Miau, Nyan, Miao, and Yaong are the sound a cat makes in various languages, not the word for the animal. They still make good names, but call them what they are.
Picking One That Works Day to Day
Names that mean cat still have to survive the ordinary business of living with a cat. Three things decide whether they do.
Two syllables with a bright ending call best
Cats hear high frequencies far better than we do, so names carrying s, sh, k, ts, or a long ee sound reach them most reliably. Kissa, Kedi, Micio, Neko, and Paka all have this. Gorbeh and Chatul are lovely names that carry less well, and both end up shortened.
Avoid names that collide with your own noises
The most common cat naming mistake is picking something that sounds like a correction. Kat and Kass both sit close to a sharp "cat!" said in annoyance, and a cat who cannot tell his name from a scolding will stop reacting to both. If you use one of the harder words as a name, make a point of only ever saying it in a warm tone.
Say each shortlisted name next to "no," "psst," "down," and "get off." If any of them rhyme, pick again.
Test it at the volume you will actually use
Cat names get used in three registers: the bright food voice, the flat public voice at the vet, and the loud worried voice at the back door at midnight. Say your shortlist in all three. Long soft names smear at volume. Goyangi becomes Goya, Marjara becomes Marj, and both are better as the short version anyway.
If you want to browse well beyond this page, the free generator at petnamebuilder.com lets you filter by species, gender, style, origin, first letter, and length, so you can pull up only two-syllable names of a given origin.
More Name Lists
- Cat Names From Movies — real screen cats, with the films they came from.
- Cat Names That Start With C — ninety names, one letter.
- Top 100 Unique Male Cat Names — a numbered hundred with meanings.
- Old Man Dog Names — for the other animal in the house.
- Blue Merle Dog Names — coat-matched names, same idea applied to dogs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What name literally means cat?
Neko in Japanese, Paka in Swahili, Kedi in Turkish, Gato in Spanish, Kissa in Finnish, and Miw in Ancient Egyptian all mean cat and nothing else. Any of them can be used as a name exactly as written. Neko is the most widely recognized outside its own language, and Miw is the most unusual.
Is Bastet a name that means cat?
Not literally. Bastet is the name of an Egyptian goddess who was depicted as a cat or as a cat-headed woman, so the association is direct and ancient, but the name itself is not the Egyptian word for cat. That word was miw.
Does Felix mean cat?
No. Felix is Latin for lucky or fortunate. It became a cat name because of a famous animated cat, not because of its meaning. The Latin word for cat is feles or cattus, which are unrelated to felix.
Are foreign-language names harder for a cat to learn?
No. A cat learns a sound pattern, not a word, so the language of origin makes no difference. What matters is that the pattern stays consistent, sounds distinct from the other noises in your home, and gets paired with something good like food or a chin scratch.
What is a good name meaning cat for a black cat?
Bastet, Bayun, Behemoth, Nekomata, and Sith all suit a black cat and carry some weight behind them. If you want the plain noun instead, Kot, Kocka, and Miw all sound suitably serious on a black cat.
How do I pick between two languages?
Pick the one that sounds better when you shout it from a doorway, because that is the version you will use most. If they tie, pick the one whose short form you prefer, since every name gets shortened eventually. Goyangi and Kucing are both fine names, but you should be happy with Goya and Kuch before you commit.
