Metro Vancouver dog owners have forgotten Fido, rejected Rover and pretty much scrapped Rags.

Since the turn of the century, your furry friend has a better chance of having a human name than a traditional canine moniker. Enter Max, Charlie, Molly, Lucy, Sam and Abby.

Max is widely reported to be the most popular dog name on the planet and The Vancouver Sun's 100,000-entry dog-name database shows that local dog owners are true to the trend. There are 1,347 dogs named Max registered in the 15 municipalities that contributed data to the project, good for first overall.

The global dominance of Max is a sea change from the days when Rex was king and Fido was quintessentially man's best friend.

The name Fido grew rapidly in popularity in the 1860s when U.S. president Abraham Lincoln's yellow Lab cross was photographed for a portrait and became the first presidential pet to attain celebrity status. Fido, whose name means faithful in Latin, did not accompany the Lincolns to Washington, but did attend the president's funeral procession in Springfield, Ill.

"Fido has been on the outs for quite a while," said UBC psychology professor Stan Coren. "But he was the first presidential dog to be photographed and became quite popular."

Sometimes particular names become family traditions. Famed psychologist Kurt Kafka had at least six dachshunds named Max.

"When I asked [Kafka] about that, he said the first one was named Max and the second one looked very much like him," Coren recalled. "Kafka said, 'We called him something else, but I kept calling him Max.'"

British prime minister Winston Churchill kept toy poodles, all named Rufus.

"When asked his dog's name, Churchill said, 'Rufus Two, but the Two is silent.'"

Today the tendency is to give dogs human names.

Coren attributes the rise of human names to a growing number of female dog owners and the changing place that dogs occupy in our lives.

Dogs bred for working and hunting lived outside and more often kept company with men who favoured descriptive names such as Red or Bear and terse, monosyllabic names such as Rex and Jack.

"We have more and more companion dogs than ever before. With more people living in condos you need a friendly little couch potato," Coren explained. "We have bred a whole bunch of new companion species that are widely available and they are great sucky-face dogs."

"Even the ones that are too big to ride in purses are still frou-frou dogs," he laughed.

Young single women and seniors (who also tend to be women, as many outlive their husbands) are acquiring companion dogs more than ever before and women favour human names more than men do, he said.

The trend to 19th-century girl names is strongly represented in the dog-name database and in the list of the most popular names given to human girls in B.C. Eight of the top 20 girls' names listed by B.C. Vital Statistics also turn up among the top 50 dog names.