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.
2,387
Total pieces
131
Articles
1,085
Baby commentary
1,171
Pet commentary
Jack Lin's contributions
- Baby commentary
Finn
Finn peaked in 2017 at rank 167 and now sits at 198. The chart line shows a name that climbed steadily through the 2000s and 2010s on the Celtic-revival wave, hit its peak, and ha…
- Baby commentary
Freya
Freya is the Norse goddess of love, fertility, war, and death — an unusually broad portfolio for any deity, and an unusually rich one for a baby name. The current rank of 159 sits…
- Baby commentary
Genevieve
Genevieve has 123,100 cumulative American girls on SSA record dating back to the early 20th century, with a 1918 peak that put it inside the top 100. The current rank of 165 refle…
- Baby commentary
Georgia
Few American girls' names carry an all-time SSA peak (rank 84 in 1947) that sits more than 75 years before their current position. Georgia does. The name has been quietly climbing…
- Baby commentary
Grayson
Grayson was outside the SSA top 1000 until 1984. By 2017 it was top 30. That is one of the steepest climbs in modern American boy-naming, and unlike Liam or Aiden, Grayson did it…
- Baby commentary
Harper
Harper Lee published To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960, and for the next forty-five years, almost no one used Harper as a first name. Then David and Victoria Beckham named their daugh…
- Baby commentary
Henry
Eight kings of England, two American presidents, and a 19th-century rank in the SSA top 10 every single year from 1880 to 1904. Henry is the rare American boys' name that has neve…
- Baby commentary
Hudson
Hudson didn't exist as a U.S. boys' name in any meaningful sense before 1995. It entered the SSA top 1000 that year at #786, and in 2024 it hit its all-time peak inside the top 25…
- Baby commentary
Ian
Ian peaked in 2005 at rank 65 and has held within ten positions of that peak for the entire two decades since. That kind of flatline (almost no climb, almost no decline) is data s…
- Baby commentary
Iris
Iris peaked in 2024 at rank 71, which is the highest the name has ever held in continuous SSA records. The previous high was in 1900, when Iris briefly entered the top 200 during…
- Baby commentary
Isaac
Isaac means "he laughs" in Hebrew. The biblical Sarah laughed when she was told she would conceive a son in old age, and the child was named for that laughter. Three thousand year…
- Baby commentary
Isaiah
Isaiah peaked in 2006 at rank 39, then did something most biblical names don't: it held. Nineteen years later it sits at rank 56, having dropped only modestly while neighbours lik…
- Baby commentary
Isla
Isla was outside the SSA top 1000 every year from 1880 to 2007. The name peaked at #35 in 2021 and has held that range since. Few names have made this kind of zero-to-top-50 climb…
- Baby commentary
Ivy
Beyoncé and Jay-Z named their daughter Blue Ivy in January 2012. Ivy was outside the SSA top 200 at the time. By 2024 it had peaked at #36 — its highest-ever position — and the cl…
- Baby commentary
Jack
Disclosure: I am writing this with my own name. Jack peaked in 1927, fell out of the top 100 by 1965, and clawed its way back to top 20 by 2010. The middle of that arc — the four…
- Baby commentary
Jackson
Jackson hit its all-time U.S. peak in 2013, with over 14,000 boys receiving the name in a single year. It was the most popular surname-style first name of the early 2010s — and th…
- Baby commentary
Jameson
Jameson peaked in 2019 at rank 100 and has slid gently to 117 since. The chart pattern is a familiar one. A 2010s climb, a brief plateau at the top, and a soft post-peak retreat t…
- Baby commentary
Jaxon
Jaxon was rank 879 in 2000 and rank 41 by 2016 — an ascent of more than 800 positions in sixteen years. That's one of the steepest climbs in modern SSA records for any boys' name.…
- Baby commentary
Jaxson
Jaxson peaked in 2015 at rank 64 and has slid to 171 in 2024, dropping over 100 ranks in less than a decade. This is the steepest of three competing spellings of the same phonetic…
- Baby commentary
Jayden
Jayden was the 4th most popular boys' name in America in 2010. Pull up the SSA top-10 for that year and Jayden sits between Ethan and Jacob, ahead of Michael, William, and Alexand…
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Methodology →
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