Author

Ivy Hung
Data Journalist
Based in Arizona, USA
Ivy is a data journalist based in Arizona, United States. A business school graduate now working her way into tech, she spent her early career in product marketing, project management, and marketing strategy — roles where reading a name the same way you read a brand became second nature.
She joined NamesPop because the name datasets sit at exactly the intersection she cares about: consumer behaviour, cultural identity, and what numbers tell us about decisions families make quietly, one at a time. Her writing leans on SSA and municipal pet registries the way a marketer reads a segmentation report — looking for the audiences hiding inside the aggregate.
Cross-cultural naming is her main beat, with a particular interest in how Hispanic, Asian-American, and bicultural families navigate the tension between heritage and assimilation in the American Southwest.
2,409
Total pieces
140
Articles
1,119
Baby commentary
1,150
Pet commentary
Ivy Hung's contributions
- Articleculture
Cinco de Mayo and the Naming Question No One Asks: How Mexican-American Families Blend Two Traditions
Many Mexican-American families quietly practice dual-name identity — Spanish on the birth certificate, an Anglo equivalent at school. Here's what the data reveals.
·9 min read
- Articleculture
Nautas and Cardinal: Cameron Diaz's Naming Philosophy Is a Whole Thesis
Raddix, Cardinal, Nautas — the Diaz-Madden family is treating names as concepts rather than traditions. It says something about a particular kind of cultural confidence.
·10 min read
- Articleculture
The Blue Ivy Effect: When a Celebrity Kid's Name Becomes a Baby Name
Beyoncé brought Blue Ivy to the 2026 Met Gala. But it's not Blue that parents borrowed — it's the surrounding wave. Here's how celebrity naming contagion actually works.
·10 min read
- Articleanalysis
Mabel Tanaka and the Mixed-Heritage Name: What Pixar's Hoppers Got Right About 2026 Asian-American Families
Mabel Tanaka is the perfect 2026 name: vintage Anglo first name plus Japanese surname, no compromise, no apology. It mirrors a real and accelerating pattern in California birth data.
·8 min read
- Articleanalysis
Frenchie Fatigue: After Five Straight Years at #1, the Names Owners Pick Are Telling a Quieter Story
The Frenchie's permanent #1 status is masking a quieter shift: the names owners pick for them have aged away from the high-fashion couture cluster of 2019-2022 toward sturdier, almost apologetic choices.
·8 min read
- Articleanalysis
The Ozempic Baby Paradox: Surprise Pregnancies Are Producing a Different Kind of Name
Surprise pregnancies produce different names than planned ones. The Ozempic baby cohort is quietly reversing the post-Pinterest era of researched five-syllable names — toward shorter, more intuitive choices.
·8 min read
- Articleanalysis
The Orla Effect: When the Royal Family's Dog Has Puppies, Pet Naming Quietly Shifts in the U.S. Too
When a royal photo-op replaces a baby announcement with a puppy announcement, it codifies something U.S. pet-name data has shown for years: Irish-leaning dog names outperform their human-name equivalents.
·8 min read
- Articleopinion
When the Mayor Skips the Gala: Zohran Mamdani, Civic Belonging, and the Quiet Rise of Service-Coded Names
Mamdani's skip is a small but visible signal in a much larger trend. Across both baby and pet data, names with 'service' meanings - Asha, August, Wren, Wolf, Sage - are quietly outperforming their generic analogs.
·8 min read
- Articleanalysis
The Half-Korean Name Ledger: Beef Season 2's Austin Davis and the Hyphenation Honest Parents Won't Talk About
Naming a half-Korean child Austin Davis on prestige TV is a deliberate provocation. It mirrors a real SSA pattern that mixed Asian-American families overwhelmingly choose Anglo first names with Korean middle names — and rarely the reverse.
·8 min read
- Articleanalysis
Easter Monday Adoptions: Why Holiday-Adopted Pets Get Different Names - And What That Tells Us About Owners
Pets adopted on or near holidays get systematically different names than non-holiday adoptees - more vintage, more biblical, more 'planned-feeling' - even when the adoption itself was impulsive.
·8 min read
- Articleopinion
Boycott the Bezos: How the 2026 Met Gala Backlash Maps Onto America's Class Divide in Baby Names
When 'Bezos' becomes a slur, the class signaling that drives 'old money aesthetic' baby names ironically intensifies. Working-class parents reach for class signals harder when they feel locked out.
·8 min read
- Articleanalysis
The Papal Name Paradox: A Year After Leo XIV, the Name Leo Barely Moved. Here's Why That's the Story.
Conventional wisdom says big spiritual moments move naming behavior. The Leo XIV case proves the opposite: when a name is already trendy enough, even a globally watched papal election barely registers.
·8 min read
- Articleanalysis
The Spanglish Name: Children Who Live in Two Languages Before They Can Speak
Before he said his first word, his name was already fluent in two languages. The intimate story of bridge names in bilingual households.
·9 min read
- Articleanalysis
The Joybait Cohort: Why 'Truce' Jumped 11,000 Spots and What Peace-Themed Names Reveal About 2026 Parents
Truce isn't a name. It's a thesis statement. When parents pick a word like Truce or Halo or Solana, they're signaling a fatigue with naming as a political signal.
·7 min read
- Articleanalysis
The Mariachi Reyna Effect: How Karol G's Historic Coachella Set Is Reshaping Latina Baby-Name Confidence
Karol G's all-Latina Coachella set wasn't just a concert. For a generation of parents who have spent a decade hedging on accent marks and rolled R's, it played like a permission slip.
·7 min read
- Articleanalysis
Avalanche Cup Runs Move Hockey Names At The State Level, Not The National Level
Colorado opened the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs as the Presidents' Trophy holder this Saturday and the Cup favorite. Hockey-coded names like Cale and Nathan see Colorado-specific SSA growth that exceeds the national pattern. The state-level cuts are where the residue lives.
·9 min read
- Articleanalysis
Baby Name Market Segmentation: The 6 Parent Personas Hiding in SSA Data
Every baby name is a vote. Here are the 6 voting blocs hiding in 140 years of SSA data — a marketer's segmentation of how American parents actually name.
·10 min read
- Articleanalysis
Themed Sibling Sets Are An Old American Tradition. The Mahomes Just Made Them Visible.
Sterling Skye, Patrick "Bronze" Lavon, and now 15-month-old Golden Raye Mahomes form a coherent metallic-celestial sibling set. Themed sibling sets are not new. They are an old American naming tradition that is finally getting visible at scale.
·9 min read
- Articleanalysis
The Frida Premium: Why Culturally Rooted Names Are Outperforming Anglicized Versions Among Gen Z Latino Parents
Millennials named her Sophia. Gen Z is naming her Sofía — and Frida, and Xiomara. The cultural confidence shift behind the numbers.
·10 min read
- Articleanalysis
The Immigration Lag: How 10 Years of Border Policy Shows Up in Baby Name Data
The names changed before the laws did. Cross-referencing SSA data with immigration statistics uncovers a 3-5 year signal that policy analysts consistently miss.
·10 min read
How we work
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Topic selection, verification, corrections.
How we gather data
Methodology →
Sources, processing pipeline, limitations.