Born Here, Loved There: Where Dog Breeds Come From and Where They Are Loved. Breed origins from Wikidata and the FCI set against kennel club registrations in 10 countries

Most of the dog breeds people know were fixed in a few countries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and then spread across the world. I map 573 breeds to a present-day country of origin, using the Fédération Cynologique Internationale (FCI) nomenclature where a breed is recognised by it and Wikidata or English Wikipedia where it is not, and set them against the latest open registration figures of 10 national kennel clubs. For countries without open figures I use a clearly labelled proxy: the breed article read most in the country's main Wikipedia language over twelve months. Britain is the origin of more breeds than any other country (72), followed by France (57) and the United States (51); Europe accounts for 69% of the breeds mapped. The number one breed was born in another country for 8 of the 10 clubs, and 6 of those are British breeds; across the clubs' top tens, 79% of places go to imported breeds. Home-grown breeds make up 61% of Royal Kennel Club registrations but 2% of the Japan Kennel Club's. The French Bulldog, a French breed, tops the American Kennel Club ranking and briefly outnumbered the Labrador in Britain in 2018 before British registrations fell by 86% from their 2021 peak. The Wikipedia proxy agrees poorly with club figures where both exist and should be read as a measure of curiosity rather than ownership.

Interactive version: https://maps.tristanhotham.com/dog-breeds/. Data and code: https://github.com/Tristan-Hotham/dog-breeds. Blog post: https://blog.tristanhotham.com/2026/10/28/dog-breeds/.