We bought a puppy. We named her Magnolia, but decided to use the name “Maggie” for short. As a formerly popular comedian once said, “”Always end the name of your child with a vowel, so that when you yell the name will carry.”
I’ve owned dogs before when I was younger, so actually buying and having one is familiar. What was new to me, however, was the type of dog we bought. It’s a purebred Maltese, and we were offered the option of registering it with the Americal Kennel Club (AKC). Not knowing what that was, I did some research.
The AKC is one of the official registries of American purebred dogs, having been around since 1884. Other than my personal wish to say “my dog is registered with the AKC” to anyone and everyone who wants to hear, the AKC serves two primary purpose: 1) to provide papers for breeders who want to sell purebred puppies and 2) to allow dogs to participate in events such as dog sports events and what’s known as conformation shows.
As a nationally-recognized organization, the AKC keeps a pretty substantial database with more than 900,000 dog demographics listed. Like any good data registry, business governance rules abound within the AKC database. For example, a dog can only be inducted into the AKC if it’s parents are themselves recognized as purebred, Other rules, however, such as health or show quality, are paid less attention.
After I called the AKC and gave them the basic information on our puppy, they sent me back an email with the following dog registration information:
AKC Name: MAGNOLIA VIII
AKC Number: XX01571502
Breed: Maltese
Gender: Female
Color: White
Pretty simple stuff, but if you look again, you’ll see that the name had a Roman numeral after it, something I did not provide the AKC. After a search on the web site, I found out what this number designates:
“The AKC reserves the right to assign Roman numerals for identification purposes. The AKC permits 37 dogs of each breed to be assigned the same name. In this case the name you chose had already been used for this breed so a Roman numeral was assigned. When all 37 allotments have been taken, your last name is added.”
Being a data geek, I found this to be very interesting. Why 37 dogs? And why not just use the AKC Number which, I suppose, is a better unique identifier than the more common, perhaps overused, name (Hello, Spot and Fido!).
So I gave the AKC another phone call and spoke with Richard, a customer service representative. He told me that no one at the AKC knows why the number 37 was chosen as the mysterious drop off point for a dog’s name; it’s been that way for the last 60 years or so.
As for using the common name versus a more unique identifier such as the AKC number, Richard told me that most dogs are identified in competition on what’s known as a “premium list.” This list is similar to those used in horse racing, and historically refers to the dogs by name and not by number. Hence, the use of the Roman numeral in Magnolia VIII separates her from, say, the award winning dog given the name, Magnolia V.
I asked if the AKC nomenclature system ever resulted in lookup errors in which the dog name was missing or resulted in duplicates. Richard told me no, but did add that long names such as “Lady Buffington from Port Jarviss” tended to cause some search typos. He would stick with “Lady Buffington” and just scan the data from those results.
Of course, I don’t think we’ll need to worry about that. We’ve already decided Maggie won’t be a show dog and we have no plans to become breeders in the near future. I do find it amazing that, as analysts, we struggle each day in ways to isolate uniqueness in our data and yet the AKC seems to have found a method that appears to work on the very field we analysts see as a no-no,
The AKC’s methodology also has a bit of a royal undertone in it, don’t you think? I’m pretty sure Magnolia VIII and all her compatriots would agree.