Geeky Pet Names

Press for one of these science related pet names, each with a true line on what it means.

Geeky Pet Names

AlhazenThe Latin name of Ibn al-Haytham, the medieval scholar of optics.

How it works

Geeky pet names from five shelves: units, particles and physics words, math, computing, scientists of history and the periodic table. Every card states one checked fact.

Read the full guide

Pick a shelf

After a press, the list under the button narrows the draw. Units, particles and physics words gives Quark, Photon and Kelvin, the base unit of temperature. Math gives Pi, Fibonacci and Googol, the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeros. Computing gives Pixel, Kludge and Nibble, which is four bits.

Names that fit the animal

Pavlov is known for his work on conditioning in dogs. Mu is a Greek letter and what a cat says. Floppy suits long ears, Inertia a pet at rest, and Decibel a loud one.

Questions and answers

What are good geeky names for a dog?

Pavlov, after the physiologist known for his work on conditioning in dogs, then Newton, Kepler, Quark and Byte. Tesla is the unit of magnetic flux density. Decibel, a unit for how loud a sound is, fits a dog who barks.

What are nerdy names for a cat?

Mu, a Greek letter and what a cat says, then Pixel, Cursor, Qubit and Hypatia, a mathematician and astronomer of ancient Alexandria. Entropy, a measure of disorder, suits a cat who clears shelves.

What are science names for a pair of pets?

Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. Proton and Electron carry a positive and a negative charge, Bit and Byte go together, and Kelvin and Celsius are both tied to temperature.

Why are there no film or game characters?

This site does not use the characters of films, shows, games or comics as names. Every name here is a real unit, particle, term or element, or a scientist who died before 1970. Fiction borrowed some of them later; the card gives the science.

All 148 names

Units, particles and physics words 32

Ampere The unit of electric current, named after the French physicist Andre-Marie Ampere.
Atom The basic particle of a chemical element.
Decibel A unit for how loud a sound is, one tenth of a bel.
Doppler The Doppler effect is the change in a wave's frequency as its source moves past.
Electron A subatomic particle with a negative electric charge.
Entropy A measure of how disordered or spread out energy is.
Gluon The particle that holds quarks together.
Hertz The unit of frequency: one cycle a second.
Inertia The tendency of a body at rest to stay at rest.
Ion An atom or molecule with an electric charge.
Joule The unit of energy.
Kelvin The base unit of temperature in the International System of Units.
Laser A device that sends out a narrow beam of light.
Lumen The unit that measures how much light a source gives off.
Lux The unit that measures how much light falls on a surface.
Micron A millionth of a meter.
Mole The unit chemists use for an amount of substance.
Momentum Mass times velocity.
Muon A particle like the electron, with a much greater mass.
Neutrino A particle so light, and with no charge, that it passes through almost everything.
Ohm The unit of electrical resistance, named after the German physicist Georg Ohm.
Pascal The unit of pressure, named after Blaise Pascal.
Photon The particle of light.
Plasma One of the four classical states of matter.
Prism A clear block with flat sides that bends light.
Proton A subatomic particle with a positive electric charge.
Quantum The smallest amount of something that can take part in an interaction.
Quark An elementary particle, one of the building blocks of matter.
Tachyon A hypothetical particle that always travels faster than light.
Tesla The unit of magnetic flux density, named after the inventor Nikola Tesla.
Volt The unit of electric potential.
Watt The unit of power.

Math 25

Abacus A hand-worked tool for calculating, with beads on rods.
Algebra The branch of mathematics that works with symbols in place of numbers.
Alpha Letter one of the Greek alphabet.
Axiom A statement taken to be true, as a place to start reasoning from.
Beta The second letter of the Greek alphabet.
Calculus The mathematical study of continuous change.
Delta The fourth letter of the Greek alphabet.
Fibonacci In the Fibonacci sequence each number is the sum of the two before it.
Fractal A shape with detail at every scale, however far you zoom in.
Gamma The third letter of the Greek alphabet.
Googol The digit 1 followed by one hundred zeros.
Hypotenuse The side of a right triangle that faces the right angle.
Infinity Something boundless, limitless or endless.
Mobius A Mobius strip is a loop of paper with a half-twist, so it has only one side.
Mu The twelfth letter of the Greek alphabet, and what a cat says.
Omega The last letter of the Greek alphabet.
Parabola A U-shaped curve.
Pi The ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.
Prime A prime number can be divided evenly only by 1 and itself.
Radian A unit of angle.
Rhombus A shape with four sides of equal length.
Sigma The Greek capital letter that mathematicians use to mean add them all up.
Tangent A straight line that just touches a curve.
Theorem A statement that has been proven.
Vector A quantity with both a size and a direction.

Computing 31

Ada A programming language named after Ada Lovelace.
Algorithm A finite list of exact instructions for solving a problem.
Ampersand The sign that stands for the word and.
Ascii A standard that gives every letter and sign a number.
Asterisk The sign on the keyboard that is a small picture of a star.
Binary Counting with only two symbols, 0 and 1.
Bit The most basic unit of information in computing.
Boolean A kind of data with two possible values, true and false.
Bug A defect in a computer program.
Byte A unit of digital information, most often eight bits.
Cache A store of data kept close by so the next request is answered faster.
Captcha A test that a website uses to tell a human from a computer.
Cobol A programming language designed for business use.
Cookie A small block of data that a website leaves in your browser.
Cursor The mark that shows where you are on a computer screen.
Dongle A small piece of computer hardware that plugs into a port.
Floppy A floppy disk stored data on a thin, flexible magnetic disk.
Fortran A programming language designed for numeric and scientific computing.
Glitch A brief fault in a system.
Kernel The program at the core of a computer's operating system.
Kludge A clumsy, makeshift fix that somehow works.
Logo A programming language known for its turtle graphics.
Modem A device named for what it does: modulator and demodulator.
Nibble Four bits, or half a byte.
Octothorpe Another name for the number sign, or hash.
Pilcrow The mark that shows where a paragraph begins.
Pixel The smallest element of a picture on a screen.
Qubit The basic unit of quantum information.
Sudo A command that lets a user run a program with the powers of the superuser.
Voxel A pixel with depth: one cell of a grid in three-dimensional space.
Wiki A website that its readers write and edit together.

Scientists of history 40

Alhazen The Latin name of Ibn al-Haytham, the medieval scholar of optics.
Anning Mary Anning, the English fossil collector and paleontologist.
Aryabhata A mathematician and astronomer of classical India.
Avogadro Amedeo Avogadro, the Italian scientist whose name is on Avogadro's law.
Babbage Charles Babbage, who first thought up a programmable digital computer.
Banneker Benjamin Banneker, the American naturalist, mathematician and writer of almanacs.
Bohr Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist who explained the structure of the atom.
Boole George Boole, the mathematician behind Boolean algebra.
Carver George Washington Carver, the American agricultural scientist and inventor.
Celsius Anders Celsius, the Swedish astronomer who proposed the Celsius temperature scale.
Curie Marie Curie, the physicist and chemist who did pioneering research on radioactivity.
Dalton John Dalton, the English chemist who brought atomic theory into chemistry.
Darwin Charles Darwin, the naturalist who described evolution by natural selection.
Edison Thomas Edison, the American inventor.
Euclid The ancient Greek mathematician known as the father of geometry.
Euler Leonhard Euler, the Swiss mathematician.
Eureka What Archimedes is said to have shouted on making a discovery.
Fahrenheit Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, the physicist and maker of thermometers.
Faraday Michael Faraday, who studied electromagnetism.
Fermat Pierre de Fermat, the French mathematician of Fermat's Last Theorem.
Fermi Enrico Fermi, the physicist who created the world's first artificial nuclear reactor.
Franklin Rosalind Franklin, the chemist whose X-ray work was central to understanding DNA.
Galileo Galileo Galilei, the Italian astronomer and physicist.
Gauss Carl Friedrich Gauss, the German mathematician.
Herschel Caroline Herschel, the astronomer who discovered several comets.
Hubble Edwin Hubble, the American astronomer.
Hypatia A mathematician and astronomer of ancient Alexandria.
Kepler Johannes Kepler, known for his laws of planetary motion.
Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus, who gave living things their two-part scientific names.
Maxwell James Clerk Maxwell, the Scottish physicist of electromagnetic theory.
Meitner Lise Meitner, the physicist who helped discover nuclear fission.
Mendel Gregor Mendel, the founder of the modern science of genetics.
Mendeleev Dmitri Mendeleev, who drew up the periodic table of the elements.
Newton Isaac Newton set out the laws of motion and of gravitation.
Noether Emmy Noether, the German mathematician.
Pavlov Ivan Pavlov, the physiologist known for his work on conditioning in dogs.
Planck Max Planck, the German physicist who began quantum theory.
Ramanujan Srinivasa Ramanujan, the Indian mathematician.
Turing Alan Turing, the English mathematician and a founder of computer science.
Volta Alessandro Volta, the inventor of the electric battery.

The periodic table 20

Argon Element 18, the third most abundant gas in the air.
Cesium Element 55, a soft, silvery-golden metal.
Cobalt Element 27, a metal that gives glass and paint a deep blue.
Copper Element 29, a metal with a pinkish-orange color.
Curium Element 96, named after Marie and Pierre Curie.
Einsteinium Element 99, a synthetic element named after Albert Einstein.
Europium Element 63, named after the continent of Europe.
Gallium Element 31, a soft metal.
Helium Element 2, a noble gas.
Hydrogen Element 1, the lightest element.
Indium Element 49, one of the softest metals.
Iridium Element 77, one of the densest metals.
Neon Element 10, a noble gas that glows reddish-orange in a sign.
Nickel Element 28, a silvery-white metal.
Osmium Element 76, with the highest density of any stable element.
Palladium Element 46, a rare silvery-white metal.
Platinum Element 78, a precious silverish-white metal.
Rhodium Element 45, a very rare silvery-white metal.
Xenon Element 54, a noble gas.
Zinc Element 30, a metal.

How this list was compiled

Own choice of 148 pet names from science, math and computing, made for this page on 2026-10-02. Every card carries one fact, read that day in the opening section of the English Wikipedia article on that term or person (the whole article for Octothorpe and Einsteinium; CC BY-SA 4.0); the card says no more than that section does. Groups: 32 units, particles and physics words, 25 math, 31 computing, 40 scientists and mathematicians of history, 20 elements of the periodic table. A scientist is listed only if he or she died before 1970, with the year checked in the article; no living person is on the list. No name was chosen because a film, a game, a comic or a brand carries it: on the same day every name was searched as a whole word in Wikipedia's lists of fictional robots and androids and of fictional computers, and a name was taken off where a character of fiction is the better-known bearer of the word. Names on the leave-out list of the dog name generator's source were not used. The names of some units and elements are also trade names of companies; they are listed here as the unit or the element only. The fact lines were read again against the same sources on 2026-10-03. Licence: The choice of names, the groups and the wording of the lines are our own work. Facts on the cards draw on English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).