Gaby Savransky was walking his new puppy in Coffey Park, in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. She was a silvery gray shade that dog breeders call “blue fawn.” Mr. Savransky announced to the onlookers cooing over his pet that her name was Esme, she was 11 weeks old, and the breed? Pit bull.

Was he aware that there was a rebranding effort with the sometimes maligned dog type to get them to be called “pibbles”?

“Pibble?” asked Mr. Savransky, 49, who is a musician. “Is that like renaming Hell’s Kitchen?”

In a word: yes. “‘Pibble’ sounds like ‘pit bull’ but also sounds like ‘nibble,’” said Katy Brink, who is the executive editor of The Dodo, a website about animals, as well as the owner of a 7-year-old pit bull named Sasha and a foster parent to a 1-year-old pit bull named Lily. “You also see them called ‘pittie,’ ‘pittopotamous,’ ‘hippo,’ or ‘potato.’ It’s part of a bigger effort to show them as silly and sweet and gentle. They just want to give you kisses and lounge around. It shows you there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

The Dodo has a series called “Pittie Nation” that has more than one billion views on Facebook Watch, with episodes with titles like “Pablo, who was scared of men, falls in love with his new dad” (73 million views) or “Shortcake with the world’s best smile” (66 million views).