White Cat Names, With the Stories Behind Them

A white cat gets named after snow, the moon, milk and ghosts, and every list on the internet will hand you those words in a row. What the lists skip is where the words come from, which of the famous "white cats" were actually white (fewer than you think), and the one thing a new owner of a blue-eyed white cat should know before choosing anything. (Different coat on your lap? Black cat names, orange cat names and grey cat names each have their own page, stories included.)

So this page runs in that order: the ranking that exists and the ones that do not, the eyes and the ears, the two breeds built on a white coat, the famous cats checked one by one, then the names themselves, sorted by where they come from.

What white cats are actually called, market by market

Coat-specific name data is thin everywhere, and we would rather show you the holes than paper over them.

Read the US row with its caveat attached: those ten names are also, almost name for name, the general US top ten for cats of any color. White cats are not named differently from other cats; they are named Luna and Leo like everyone else, and the coat shows up in the second tier of choices, which is where this page earns its keep.

Blue eyes, deafness, and the myth that gets it half right

The old line says white cats with blue eyes are deaf. The measured version is more interesting, and it matters for naming because a deaf cat learns a hand signal, not a sound.

The dominant white gene, W, gives a cat a white coat. It does not always give blue eyes, and it does not always take the hearing. Cornell's Feline Health Center puts figures on the gradient: about 17 to 22 percent of white cats with non-blue eyes are born deaf, around 40 percent of those with one blue eye, and upwards of 65 to 85 percent of all-white cats with two blue eyes.

International Cat Care states the same gradient as relative risk rather than percentages: two blue eyes, three to five times the deafness risk of two non-blue eyes; one blue eye, about twice the risk; and a longhaired white cat is three times more likely to be deaf in both ears. Deaf white cats with one or both blue eyes make up around 1 to 1.5 percent of all cats.

Two things the myth gets wrong, per Cornell. Deafness is not blindness: blue-eyed white cats are no more prone to blindness than any other cat, and owners regularly confuse the two. And an odd-eyed white cat, one blue eye and one gold, is very often deaf on the blue side only, which is why the cat in the photo below hears you perfectly well from one direction. If you are naming one, the practical tip is old and good: pair the name with a gesture from day one.

The two breeds built on white

Most white cats are not a breed at all. Two breeds, though, were shaped around the coat, and both come from Turkey.

The Turkish Van is the swimming cat. The UK's registry, the GCCF, repeats the legend as a legend: the Van was aboard Noah's Ark and, when the Ark reached Mount Ararat, the cats leapt off and swam until they found dry land. The small colored patches allowed on an otherwise white Van are called "thumb prints" in the standard. The CFA's own page carries none of the folklore, only the documented history: Vans may have come to Europe with returning Crusaders, but the breed's modern story starts in 1955, when two British photographers working for the Turkish tourist board brought a pair back to England. The CFA recognized the breed in 1988. Our Turkish Van profile has the rest.

The Turkish Angora is the older story. The CFA's breed history records a longhaired white cat brought to Europe from Angora, later Ankara, in 1520, and the Ankara Zoo's twentieth-century program that concentrated on whites and deliberately bred blue-eyed, gold-eyed and odd-eyed lines side by side, a program the CFA calls "both scientific and genetically sound." The first documented US pair, Yildicek and Yildiz, an amber-eyed female and an odd-eyed male, arrived in 1963, and the CFA accepted the breed for show in January 1970. Their names, both Turkish for "little star" and "star", are on the list below. Profile: Turkish Angora.

The famous white cats, checked one by one

• Duchess (The Aristocats, 1970): a snow-white Turkish Angora with wide blue eyes, mother of Marie, Toulouse and Berlioz. Genuinely white, and the reason Duchess and Marie sit near the top of every white-cat list.
• Snowbell (Stuart Little, 1999): a white Persian, played by five real cats, the close-ups by a white Persian named Lucky Prince, voiced by Nathan Lane.
• Blofeld's cat (From Russia With Love onward): a white Persian stroked by the villain, and never given a name on screen. Lists that offer "Blofeld" as a white cat name are naming the man, not the cat.
• Mr. Bigglesworth (Austin Powers): began as a white Angora and lost his fur to a cryogenic accident; the hairless version was a champion Sphynx called Belfry Ted Nude-Gent. A white cat name with a plot twist.
• Snow White: Ernest Hemingway's six-toed white cat, given to him by a ship's captain; her descendants still live at the Hemingway Home in Key West. Not Snowball, which is the name the internet keeps giving her.
• Choupette: Karl Lagerfeld's cat is on every white-cat list and is not white. She is a blue-cream Birman, a pale coat with darker points. We mention her to take her off the list.
• Two names to skip: Hedwig is an owl, and Aslan is a lion. Both appear on rival pages under "white cat names."

Snow, moon and light in other languages

The prettiest white-cat names are ordinary words somewhere else, and knowing which language keeps you from a mistake.

• Yuki is Japanese for snow, written 雪. Shiro is Japanese for white, 白. Both are everyday words, not just names.
• Bianca is the Italian form of Blanche and simply means white; Blanca is the same name in Spanish and Catalan; Blanco, the masculine, is used for cats directly.
• Luna is Latin for the moon and the name of the Roman moon goddess, who in the old images drives a white chariot across the sky. It is also the number one female cat name in the United States, Britain and Australia, so a white Luna will share her name at the vet.
• Neve is the trap. As a given name it is the anglicized form of the Irish Niamh, which has nothing to do with snow. As a plain word, neve means snow in Italian and Portuguese, from the Latin nivem. It does not mean snow in French, whatever a Canadian pet-sitting site says; French for snow is neige.

Names with a story

• Ivory came into English from the Anglo-French ivorie, ultimately from the Latin ebur, and probably further back from an African word for elephant; it replaced the Old English elpendban, "elephant bone."
• Pearl is from Old French perle, of uncertain origin, possibly a diminutive of the Latin perna, a sea mussel. By the fifteenth century the word already meant something small, round and glistening white.
• Marshmallow was a plant before it was a sweet: the Old English mersc-mealwe, the mallow that grows by salt marshes, whose root paste made the original confection, named as such from 1877.
• Alaska comes from the Aleut alaxsxaq, "the object toward which the action of the sea is directed," which is a long way of saying mainland.
• Ghost is the Old English gast, breath or spirit; the "spirit of a dead person" sense arrives in the late 1300s. Casper, the friendly cartoon ghost since 1945, is a Dutch and Scandinavian form of Jasper.
• Angel descends from the Greek angelos, messenger. Frost is Old English forst, from a root meaning to freeze. Cloud started as the Old English clud, a mass of rock or a hill, and only became the weather word around 1300, by way of the resemblance between cumulus clouds and rock.
• Everest is not a mountain's own name: Andrew Waugh proposed it in 1856 after Sir George Everest, the Surveyor General of India, and the Royal Geographical Society settled on it in 1865.

The list: winter and ice

• Blizzard
• Frosty
• Frostbite
• Glacier
• Icicle
• Icy
• Ice
• Arctic
• Drift
• Chilly
• Winter
• Snowflake
• Snowball
• Snowdrop
• Polar
• Storm
• Stormy
• Flurry
• Yeti
• Jack Frost, English folklore's frost-bringing sprite
• Everest, named after Sir George Everest in 1856
• Alaska, from the Aleut word for the mainland
• Frost

Moon, stars and light

• Luna, Latin for the moon and the Roman moon goddess
• Moon
• Moonlight
• Moonbeam
• Star
• Comet
• Galaxy
• Nimbus
• Halcyon
• Borealis
• Lumen
• Lux
• Sparkle
• Twinkle
• Breeze
• Skye
• Silver
• Yildiz, Turkish for star, the first Turkish Angora tom in America
• Yildicek, Turkish for little star, his amber-eyed mate

Stones, gems and pale things

• Ivory, from the Latin for elephant tusk
• Pearl
• Opal
• Jade
• Jewel
• Alabaster
• Marble
• Crystal
• Diamond
• Chalk
• Chalky

From the kitchen

• Marshmallow, a marsh plant before it was a sweet
• Milkshake
• Milky
• Flour
• Oatmeal
• Pancake
• Popcorn
• Custard
• Creampuff
• Truffle
• Chantilly
• Almond
• Swiss
• Gouda
• Latte
• Tofu
• Fondant
• Marzipan
• Butters
• Tic-Tac
• Q-Tip
• Beluga

Ghosts and spirits

• Ghost, the Old English gast
• Casper, the friendly ghost since 1945
• Spirit
• Boo
• Abracadabra
• Shadow, the ironic favorite for a solid-white cat
• Angel, from the Greek for messenger

Flowers and the natural world

• Camellia
• Gardenia
• Magnolia
• Petunia
• Aster
• Calla
• Lotus
• Edelweiss, the white alpine flower of the song
• Cottontail
• Flopsy
• Dove
• Egret
• Aspen
• Birch
• Meadow
• Cloud, a hill before it was weather

Names that mean white, or snow, elsewhere

• Bianca, Italian, "white"
• Blanca, Spanish and Catalan, "white"
• Blanco, Spanish, "white", used for toms
• Shiro, Japanese, 白, "white"
• Yuki, Japanese, 雪, "snow"
• Neve, Italian and Portuguese for snow; as a name, the Irish Niamh

Royalty and grand names

• Queen
• Princess
• Prince
• King
• Duke
• Duchess, Disney's white Turkish Angora
• Athena
• Artemis
• Apollo
• Ares
• Adonis
• Venus
• Rhea
• Gaia
• Elara
• Kali
• Odin
• Zeus
• Balder

Classic girl names

• Anya
• Ava
• Belle
• Bliss
• Camellia
• Celeste
• Clara
• Claire
• Constance
• Delilah
• Dolly
• Eleanor
• Elena
• Esme
• Esmeralda
• Estelle
• Fiona
• Fleur
• Gemma
• Gloria
• Gracie
• Hazel
• Helen
• Hope
• Iris
• Jasmine
• Juliet
• Lacey
• Maeve
• Maisie
• Maya
• Naomi
• Nina
• Penelope
• Phoebe
• Prudence
• Purity
• Sasha
• Serena
• Sienna
• Talia
• Tess
• Thea
• Tilda
• Una
• Victoria
• Willow
• Zara
• Baby
• Nana
• Sandy

Classic boy names

• Alfred
• Amadeus
• Angus
• Archer
• Archimedes
• Asher
• Axel
• Benedict
• Benjamin
• Bryce
• Cedric
• Cesar
• Chance
• Clark
• Clyde
• Cooper
• Dante
• Darius
• Darwin
• Dean
• Dexter
• Edison
• Elvis
• Hamlet
• Harper
• Hugo
• Jett
• Kane
• Kirby
• Luke
• Mac
• Nero
• Olaf
• Otto
• Pancho
• Pluto
• Quincy
• Radar
• Reese
• Rex
• Roman
• Rupert
• Samson
• Silas
• Simon
• Sterling
• Talon
• Theo
• Tristan
• Tybalt, the Capulet, reborn as a tomcat in the musical Cats
• Ulysses
• Valor
• Victor
• Wolfgang
• Xavier
• Yale
• Yannis
• York
• Zander
• Zane
• Zorro

Funny

• Pixel
• Bubbles
• Mittens
• Snowball, the name the internet wrongly gives Hemingway's cat
• Tofu
• Popcorn
• Chalky
• Q-Tip
• Beluga
• Yeti

What to take away

• The only white-cat-specific ranking with real cats behind it is Spot Pet Insurance's US policyholder data (Luna, Bella, Lucy, Lily, Coco for girls; Leo, Milo, Oliver, Loki, Charlie for boys), with no published sample size; Britain, Canada and Australia have no usable white-cat ranking at all.
• Deafness in white cats follows the eyes: Cornell's figures run from about 17 to 22 percent with non-blue eyes to 65 to 85 percent with two blue eyes, and an odd-eyed cat is often deaf on the blue side only; blindness is not part of the picture.
• Two breeds were built on a white coat, both Turkish: the Turkish Van (modern history from 1955, CFA 1988) and the Turkish Angora (the Ankara Zoo's blue-, gold- and odd-eyed lines, CFA 1970).
• Several "famous white cats" fail the check: Choupette is a blue-cream Birman, Blofeld's cat has no name, Hemingway's was Snow White, and Hedwig and Aslan are not cats.
• Neve means snow in Italian and Portuguese and nothing of the kind as a given name (it is the Irish Niamh); Yuki, Shiro, Bianca and Blanca are the real snow-and-white words.