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
- Pet commentary
Romy
Romy registers 76 times at rank 1424 on female pets, carried into pet naming by owners who found it on a film credit, a fashion reference, or a friend's child and decided it was t…
- Pet commentary
Saki
Saki appears 66 times at rank 1579 on neutral-gender pets. The name sits at a crossroads of references: Japanese rice wine, the British short-story writer H.H. Munro's pen name, a…
- Pet commentary
Shakira
Shakira appears 76 times at rank 1427 on female pets, applied to dogs and cats by owners who love the Colombian artist, love the sound, or both. The celebrity monoculture around t…
- Pet commentary
Shanti
Shanti appears 68 times at rank 1,548 on female pets — a Sanskrit word meaning peace, calm, or tranquility, applied to animals with genuine intentionality. It's one of the more ea…
- Pet commentary
Sheldon
Sheldon at rank 1,483 with 72 records carries one dominant cultural reference that most owners are aware of when they write it on a license form: Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang…
- Pet commentary
Shih-tzu
Shih-tzu at rank 1,492 with 71 records is almost certainly the purest registry artifact in this entire batch: a breed name accidentally or carelessly entered into the name field o…
- Pet commentary
Simone
Simone registers 74 times at rank 1454 on female pets — a French feminine form of Simon that carries multiple layers of cultural weight, from Simone de Beauvoir's philosophical le…
- Pet commentary
Squirt
Squirt appears 75 times at rank 1439 on male pets, applied almost always to small dogs where it functions as affectionate size commentary. It's the naming equivalent of calling th…
- Pet commentary
Taro
Taro appears 66 times at rank 1582 on neutral-gender pets. It's a Japanese given name with deep cultural roots: Taro is traditionally the name for a firstborn son in Japan. Americ…
- Pet commentary
Terra
Terra appears 76 times at rank 1430 on female pets — a Latin name meaning "earth" that carries genuine elemental weight without the mystical overlay of names like Luna or Stella.…
- Pet commentary
Timothy
Timothy appears 68 times at rank 1,551 on male pets — a formally complete human name applied to animals, which places it alongside William, Christopher, and Benjamin in the regist…
- Pet commentary
Tuffy
Tuffy shows up 69 times at rank 1,524 — a nickname-style dog name with a long, honest history in American pet registries. It's the kind of name that appears in old photographs nex…
- Pet commentary
Wylie
Wylie appears 68 times at rank 1,554 on male pets — a surname-as-first-name with a built-in Wile E. Coyote association that owners either embrace or are entirely unaware of. Both…
- Pet commentary
Ziva
Ziva appears 67 times at rank 1567 on female pets, almost entirely driven by one source: Ziva David, the Mossad agent turned NCIS team member played by Cote de Pablo. The characte…
- Articleculture
Why Charlotte Just Dethroned Emma After Six Years — And What It Tells Us About Royal Name Influence
Charlotte's rise to #2 in the 2025 SSA data isn't random. It's a textbook example of the Royal Lag — the 5-8 year delay between a British royal birth and peak US adoption.
·9 min read
- Baby commentary
Aarav
Aarav peaked in 2015 and ranks #675 with 7,831 total SSA bearers. It's one of the most popular names in India — consistently among the top three boys' names in Maharashtra and Guj…
- Baby commentary
Adley
Adley peaked in 2021 and has 5,816 SSA records, a name that emerged from YouTube culture and now stands at rank 668 as a genuine option for parents who discovered it through a fam…
- Baby commentary
Ahmad
Ahmad peaked in 2001 and currently ranks #669 with 19,936 total SSA bearers. It's one of the classical Arabic names that has maintained a steady presence in American naming across…
- Baby commentary
Ahmed
Ahmed peaked in 2015 and ranks #687 with 16,897 total SSA bearers. It's the most widely used Westernized spelling of one of the most common names in the Muslim world, related to b…
- Baby commentary
Aliza
Aliza hit its current-peak in 2023 and has 11,546 SSA records — a Hebrew name with deep roots in Jewish tradition that has been quietly gaining ground with parents who want someth…
How we work
Editorial policy →
Topic selection, verification, corrections.
How we gather data
Methodology →
Sources, processing pipeline, limitations.