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
- Articleanalysis
Lauren Betts's NCAA Title Just Asked Whether Lauren Can Reverse A Thirty-Year Decline
UCLA beat South Carolina 79-51 last night for the women's NCAA championship. Lauren Betts won the Most Outstanding Player award. Lauren as a baby name has been declining for three decades. The question is whether a single MOP run can reverse a thirty-year curve.
·9 min read
- Articleanalysis
Sixty Days After Decoy: The Children's-Book Pet-Naming Influence Pattern Holds
Sixty days after Decoy Saves Opening Day hit the New York Times children's bestseller list, the pet-naming residue is tracking the durable five-year-asset pattern rather than the six-month-spike pattern. The book is doing the work I projected it would.
·9 min read
- Articleanalysis
Spring Puppy Adoption Names Track MLB Opening Day Rosters With A 30-Day Lag
Late March puppy adoption season and MLB Opening Day rosters share a structural 30-day naming pipeline. NYC and Seattle pet-licensing files reflect the residue almost like clockwork year after year.
·9 min read
- Articleanalysis
Nova, Ember, Echo: When SaaS Product Names Quietly Become Baby Names
Nova was a Zendesk competitor in 2018. Now it's a top-40 baby name. The aesthetic overlap between SaaS branding and nursery culture is not a coincidence.
·9 min read
- Articleopinion
Bark At The Park Is The Underrated MLB Pet-Naming Engine That AKC Actually Tracks
Bark At The Park promotions are one of MLB's fastest-growing fan-engagement categories. The Pirates have 12 dog-friendly games on the 2026 schedule alone. AKC pet-name registration files quietly reflect the residue from this growing engagement category.
·9 min read
- Articleanalysis
The Silent Middle Name: How Chinese and Korean Families Hide Heritage in Plain Sight
White America is killing the middle name. Asian America is using it as a time capsule. The story of how heritage gets hidden in plain sight on a birth certificate.
·10 min read
- Articleanalysis
Sweet 16 Diffusion Looks Different For Women's Basketball Than For Men's
The men's NCAA Tournament tends to spike already-existing names. The women's tournament keeps generating new SSA-file entries. The 2026 Sweet 16 weekend is the latest test of a pattern that has been visible for at least five years.
·9 min read
- Articleanalysis
The Border Name: How Arizona, New Mexico and South Texas Baby Names Diverge from the Rest of America
Cross the Rio Grande and the #1 name flips overnight. SSA state-level data reveals naming patterns in the Southwest that national charts completely miss.
·9 min read
- Articleanalysis
The Ethan Effect: Why Asian-American Parents Pick "Safer" Names Than Their White Neighbors
For many Asian-American immigrant families, names like Ethan and Emma aren't just popular choices. They're calculated hedges against a discriminatory world. Here's what the data shows.
·10 min read
- Articleanalysis
The Sofía-Sophia Split: How Second-Generation Latino Parents Are Redrawing the Baby Name Map
Every year, Sofía loses a tilde — and a family tells a story about America. Three spellings, three generations, one name at the center of bicultural identity.
·10 min read
- Articleanalysis
Dekopin And Decoy Are The Same Dog. The Two Names Are Different Languages Of Love.
Decoy Ohtani has two names. Dekopin in Japanese, Decoy in English. Same dog, different languages, different people speaking them. The dual-name pattern is becoming the bilingual American family's quiet template for pet naming.
·9 min read
- Articleanalysis
Your Baby Name Is a Brand: What Product Marketers Know That New Parents Don't
Netflix A/B tests thumbnails. Your baby's name has no test cohort — so here's the brand strategy framework that makes the decision easier.
·11 min read
- Articleanalysis
The NFL Combine Just Compressed An 18-Month Naming Cycle Into 72 Hours For Fernando Mendoza
Fernando Mendoza has been the consensus QB1 since the Combine started in Indianapolis this week. The NFL Combine compresses 18 months of name-exposure into 72 prime-time hours, and Fernando is one of the rare names sitting in a slot where the pulse can actually move it.
·9 min read
- Articleanalysis
Thor, Smasher, And A Typology Of Winter Olympic Athletes' Pets
Nine athletes brought their dogs to Milano-Cortina. Jutta Leerdam's Thor. Mikaela Shiffrin's Smasher. The naming pattern — heavy, mythological, single-syllable — reveals something about what individual sports do to athlete-pet relationships.
·9 min read
- Articleanalysis
Alysa Liu's Olympic Gold Just Asked A Question American Figure Skating Has Never Had To Answer
Sarah Hughes, Tara Lipinski, Kristi Yamaguchi, Peggy Fleming. Every American women's figure-skating Olympic gold medalist before now has had an English-coded first name that the SSA file responded to. Alysa Liu just won, and the pattern faces its first non-English test.
·9 min read
- Articleanalysis
Tina And Milo Are The First Olympic Mascots That Are Actually Becoming Pet Names
Olympic mascots almost never become real pet names. Izzy did not. Mukmuk did not. The Milano-Cortina sibling stoats Tina and Milo, with their soft Italian phonetics and disability-representation backstory, are quietly breaking the pattern.
·9 min read
- Articleopinion
Bad Bunny's Halftime Show Was Quietly The Year's Largest Spanish-Naming Tutorial
The Bad Bunny halftime performance was the NFL's most globally streamed halftime ever and the largest single-event exposure to Spanish-language naming that non-Latino American parents will get in 2026.
·9 min read
- Articleanalysis
Puppy Bowl Has Quietly Named More American Pets Than Any Single Show On Television
Puppy Bowl XXII airs Super Bowl Sunday. Across 22 years, the show has put thousands of named puppies in front of millions of viewers, and AKC registration files have quietly absorbed those names year after year.
·9 min read
- Articleanalysis
Decoy Saves Opening Day Just Made Pet Naming A Five-Year Asset, Not A Viral Moment
HarperCollins released Decoy Saves Opening Day this morning. The book debuted at the top of the NYT children's bestseller list. Children's books move pet names differently than ESPN highlights — they make a pet name a five-year asset rather than a viral moment.
·9 min read
- Articleanalysis
The Australian Open Final Week Is When Tennis Players' Pets Become Naming Influencers
Coco Gauff's Charlie. Naomi Osaka's Shai. Carlos Alcaraz's Lolo, Kira, and Taco. The final week of any Grand Slam is the highest-engagement window for athlete-pet content, and the women's tour drives most of it.
·9 min read
How we work
Editorial policy →
Topic selection, verification, corrections.
How we gather data
Methodology →
Sources, processing pipeline, limitations.