Tabby Maine Coon Cat Names
The cat that won Best Cat at the 1895 Madison Square Garden cat show was a brown tabby Maine Coon named Cosey — generally cited as the first major U.S. cat-show win by a breed native to the United States, and the cat that established brown tabby as the breed's archetypal coat. CFA recognizes brown classic tabby, brown mackerel tabby, silver tabby, red tabby, and several others, but the brown tabby is the historical reference image: dark whorls or stripes on a warm brown ground, with the M-marking on the forehead.
Maine Coons take up to three years to reach full size — males commonly 13 to 18 pounds, sometimes more — so a tabby kitten will go through visible coat stages before settling. CFA describes the undercoat as 'noticeably thicker in the colder months,' which shifts the apparent tabby contrast across seasons; the same cat reads more sharply striped in summer than in its winter ruff.
Worked names: Cosey (after the 1895 winner), Bangor, Acadia, Penobscot (Maine geography), Maru (the Japanese internet brown tabby with white), Larry (the Downing Street brown-and-white Chief Mouser since 2011).
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cotton | Woody hill | Male | |
| Molly | Bitter | Female | English |
| Miles | of smiles | Male | Latin |
| Tabora | Plays a small drum | Female | |
| Scrooge | Dickens' miser | Male | |
| Baxter | baker | Male | English |
| Max | Large spring | Male | English |
| Tiger | A large, striped, carnivorous mammal from Asia. | Male | Animal |
| Quincy | Fifth: derived from Roman clan name. | Male | |
| Brisha | From Briseis the woman Achilles loved in Homer's Iliad. | Female | |
| White Chocolate | Product of cocoa seeds used for drinks or candy | Unisex | |
| Bartholomew | furrow, hill | Male | Aramaic |
| Patsy | From Patricia - Well born maiden | Male | English |
| Angus | superb, unique | Male | Anglicized |
| Lavender | Lavender, A Purple Flower | Female | English |
| Puma | Mountain lion | Female | Quechua |
| Tabitha | gazelle, roe-buck | Female | Aramaic |
| Dante | lasting | Male | Latin |
| Phyllis | A green branch. | Female | Greek |
| Mork And Mindy | Abbreviation Of Melinda. | Unisex | |
| Hope | Hope | Female | |
| Rigel | Foot. Rigel is a blue star of the first magnitude that marks the hunter's lef... | Male | |
| Ynes | Chaste. Variant of Agnes. | Female | |
| Pearl | Precious jewel. A hard, rounded gem, usually white in colour | Female | Latin |
| Oliver | The olive tree. The biblical olive tree symbolizes fruitfulness and beauty an... | Male | Latin |
| Panther | A black leopard | Male | |
| Hansel And Gretel | Gift From God | Unisex | |
| Ludo Bagman | Wrongly accused of being a Death Eater. | Male | |
| Sasha | defending men | Female | Russian |
| Walter | Powerful ruler | Male |
Showing 30 of 79 matching names.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is brown tabby the original Maine Coon color?
It's the historical reference image. Cosey, the brown tabby female who won Best Cat at the 1895 Madison Square Garden cat show, is generally cited as the first major U.S. cat-show win by an American native breed, and the brown tabby pattern set the visual archetype for the breed in the early registry literature. CFA recognizes many other Maine Coon colors today — silver tabby, red tabby, solid colors, tortoiseshell variants — but the brown tabby is the breed's founding canonical color and remains the most common in registered litters.
Why does the Maine Coon's tabby pattern look different in winter?
The breed has a heavy double coat, with shaggy guard hairs over a dense undercoat. CFA describes the undercoat as 'noticeably thicker in the colder months, and shorter and less dense in the summer.' In winter, the dense undercoat softens the contrast of the tabby striping; the same cat reads as a sharper, more clearly striped pattern in summer when the undercoat thins. Photos of a brown tabby Maine Coon taken in February versus August often look like two different cats.
Which naming registers fit a brown tabby Maine Coon?
Cosey is the canonical historical wink, after the 1895 Madison Square Garden winner. Maine geography names — Bangor, Acadia, Penobscot, Katahdin, Casco, Saco, Moosehead — honor the breed's regional origin; the breed was made the official state cat of Maine in 1985. Brown tabby pop-culture references — Maru (the Japanese internet cat), Larry (the Chief Mouser at 10 Downing Street since 2011), Hobbes (the Calvin and Hobbes orange tabby is technically orange, not brown, but the silhouette is shared) — fit a brown tabby kitten growing into an 18-pound adult. For a polydactyl brown tabby, Hemingway is a natural choice: the writer's polydactyl cat colony at his Key West home is the most-cited polydactyl-cat reference in literature.
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