Author
Jack Lin
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
Based in Taipei, Taiwan
Jack is a software engineer based in Taipei, Taiwan. He built NamesPop because the naming tools he found online all felt the same: slow, ad-heavy, and better at gathering SEO keywords than answering a parent's actual question.
He spends most of his writing time on trend analysis, data provenance, and the question of how software changes the small family decisions that used to happen in living rooms. Lately he has been thinking about how algorithms shape naming itself — what it means when a top-100 list starts to feel like a recommendation engine.
He lives with a rabbit named Money, which is where most of his pet-naming opinions come from.
Articles by Jack Lin
7 publishedOpinion
The Ethics of Unique Names: Gift to the Child or Burden?
Every article about unique baby names eventually lands in the same place: research shows unusual names can cause discrimination, so choose carefully. That argument is correct and also somehow incomplete.
·11 min read
Analysis
Naming in the Age of Algorithms: How Apps and Data Shape What We Call Our Kids
I built a baby name database, and in doing so I became part of the system that shapes what names parents encounter when they search. The algorithm decides what surfaces first; what surfaces first gets considered.
·10 min read
Analysis
Dog vs. Cat Naming Patterns: What NYC + Seattle Data Reveals
When I built the pet names section of NamesPop using NYC and Seattle licensing data, I expected dogs and cats to pull from the same name pool. What I found was more interesting.
·10 min read
Analysis
The Humanization of Pet Names: Luna, Charlie, and What It Means
Fido is nearly extinct as a dog name. In NYC licensing data, dogs named Theodore outnumber dogs named Fido. The shift from Rex and Spot to Luna and Charlie is not just a naming trend — it's a structural change.
·10 min read
Analysis
What Your Pet's Name Reveals About Your Attachment Style
My rabbit is named Money. I did not name him that because I prioritize finances over affection — it was a joke that became a term of endearment. But the question of what pet names reveal about how we relate to animals is a real one.
·9 min read
Analysis
What 100 Years of SSA Data Teaches About American Identity
I built a baby name database as a side project, and somewhere in the process of cleaning 140 years of SSA data, the numbers stopped feeling like data and started feeling like a national autobiography.
·11 min read
Analysis
The Five-Year Lag: Why Celebrity Baby Names Take So Long to Catch On
When Gwyneth Paltrow named her daughter Apple in 2004, it seemed inevitable that Apple would enter the mainstream. It never did. I kept finding the same pattern in SSA data while building NamesPop: celebrity baby names rarely surge immediately — when they spread at all, it takes years.
·9 min read
How we work
Editorial policy →
Topic selection, verification, corrections.
How we gather data
Methodology →
Sources, processing pipeline, limitations.