Meaning and background
The story behind Cafe
Cafe is a dictionary spelling alongside café. Oxford traces the English word to French café, meaning coffee or a coffee house, and uses it for somewhere serving drinks and simple meals. It also records a South African sense of a small shop selling everyday goods. These different settings can give an owner a specific naming memory, such as a neighbourhood meeting place. The unaccented form is therefore supported as an English word; it need not be assigned the meaning of an unrelated surname.
- Meaning
- English cafe, also café, borrowed from French; a drinks-and-simple-meals venue, with an additional South African small-shop sense. Source
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Everyday moments“Cafe, come here!”
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About Cafe
Recorded as a dog’s name
Cafe appears in 5 dog licence records in the 2026 New York City dataset.
How to read this count
These records cover New York City and may count the same dog in more than one licence period. They are not a national popularity ranking.
Pronunciation and rhythm
/kəfeɪ/
US English sound sequence, converted from the CMU dictionary. Stress marks are shown separately.
Stress on the second syllable in the recorded US readings.
Other dictionary readings and notation
/kəfeɪ/ · primary stress on syllable 2K AH0 F EY1
/kæfeɪ/ · primary stress on syllable 2K AE0 F EY1
These are US dictionary readings. Personal, regional and other language pronunciations may differ.
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Sources and research notes (2)
- New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene NYC Dog Licensing Dataset — extract_year 2026 — Dog licence periods, not unique dogs; NYC only. No owner-level fields retrieved.
- Carnegie Mellon University / CMU Sphinx maintainers CMU US English Pronouncing Dictionary — US English dictionary readings; not owner-specific or exhaustive multilingual pronunciation
References support the individual facts shown. A source link does not mean the entire profile has been verified.