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
- Baby commentary
Naomi
Naomi hit No. 44 in 2024, the highest the name has ever ranked in the United States. The story of how a Hebrew biblical name with a meaning of pleasant has become a global cross-c…
- Baby commentary
Natalie
Natalie peaked in 2006 at #13 and has been settling since, currently at #73. Most names that lose 60 ranks across two decades are in trouble, but Natalie's decline is the gentle,…
- Baby commentary
Piper
Piper hit its peak at rank 60 in 2015 and has since drifted downward to rank 160, with about 60,750 cumulative American Piper-girls on SSA record. The name's arc is one of the cle…
- Baby commentary
Ruth
Ruth has 834,300 cumulative American girls on SSA record, putting it among the deepest-rooted girls' names in the dataset. The 1920 peak at rank 5 sits more than a century in the…
- Baby commentary
Santiago
Santiago hit its all-time U.S. peak in 2024 — not in 1990, not in 2010, but right now. That timing matters. It puts Santiago in the same demographic story as Mateo : a Spanish-lan…
- Baby commentary
Scarlett
Margaret Mitchell published Gone with the Wind in 1936 with Scarlett O'Hara as its protagonist. The 1939 film, with Vivien Leigh in the role, made the name unforgettable. And then…
- Baby commentary
Sebastian
Sebastian is the rare four-syllable boys' name to break the U.S. top 20 — and one of even fewer to do it across English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Italian-speaking househol…
- Baby commentary
Serenity
A virtue-name that broke into the SSA top 100 in 2009 and crested at rank 56 in 2013 carries a particular kind of cultural fingerprint. Serenity does. The current rank of 117 refl…
- Baby commentary
Sloane
An Irish surname that didn't enter the SSA top 1000 until 2009 has become a recognizable American girls' name within a decade. Sloane reached rank 153 in 2022. The cumulative coun…
- Baby commentary
Tatum
Tatum reached its current peak at rank 205 in 2024, the same year as the data snapshot, with about 27,000 cumulative American girls on SSA record. The chart climb has been steady…
- Baby commentary
Thiago
Thiago is the No. 55 boy in America in 2025, an all-time high. Ten years ago it was outside the top 200. The name's climb is one of the cleanest examples of how Latino-American na…
- Baby commentary
Tucker
Tucker peaked in 2014 at rank 162 and now sits at 200 in 2024, sitting almost exactly on the threshold between the visible top 200 and the unranked tier below. Over 53,000 America…
- Baby commentary
Valentina
Valentina is the No. 47 girl in America in 2024, an all-time high. Outside Hispanic-American naming circles, the name still sometimes registers as exotic or formal. Inside those c…
- Baby commentary
Valerie
Three decades of top-100 strength is the kind of mid-century run very few names sustained through the cultural turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s. Valerie did, peaking at rank 53 i…
- Baby commentary
Vivian
Vivian peaked at the top of the SSA chart in 1920, fell to rank 460 by 1980, and is now back at #77 after a slow 30-year climb. The 60-year hiatus is shorter than Ruby 's but long…
- Baby commentary
Vivienne
Vivienne hit its current peak at rank 184 in 2024 and has been climbing steadily for more than 15 years. About 22,100 cumulative American girls bear the name on SSA record, almost…
- Baby commentary
Xavier
Xavier is one of two American boys' names in the top 200 starting with X. The other is Xander. That scarcity, combined with three syllables, two language registers, and one of the…
- Baby commentary
Zion
Zion peaked in 2023 at rank 138 and currently sits at 151. The chart shape is one of the cleanest examples of a place-name-as-personal-name working through American naming culture…
- Baby commentary
Zoe
Zoe entered the SSA top 100 in 2000, peaked at #29 in 2012, and has held a tight band between #29 and #40 every year since. That is unusually stable for a contemporary girls' name…
How we work
Editorial policy →
Topic selection, verification, corrections.
How we gather data
Methodology →
Sources, processing pipeline, limitations.