Meaning and background
The story behind Precious
Precious is an English adjective for something valued greatly or dearly loved. Its history leads through Old French precios to Latin pretiosus, ultimately related to price or value. The word has also been adopted as a personal name, but the clear modern association is affection rather than a claim that the pet has financial worth. Its two syllables are distinct in everyday British speech; an owner's specific reason for choosing it cannot be reconstructed from spelling alone.
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About Precious
Recorded as a dog’s name
Precious appears in 50 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
/pɹɛʃəs/
US English sound sequence, converted from the CMU dictionary. Stress marks are shown separately.
Stress on the first syllable in the recorded US readings.
View dictionary notation
/pɹɛʃəs/ · primary stress on syllable 1P R EH1 SH AH0 S
These are US dictionary readings. Personal, regional and other language pronunciations may differ.
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Sources and research notes (2)
Gender association: NYC licence-period records. Any dog can use this name.
- 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.