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
Josephine
Josephine peaked at the SSA top 50 in 1918, fell out of the top 100 by the 1960s, and spent forty years drifting through the lower hundreds before the long climb back. The current…
- Baby commentary
Juan
Juan peaked in 2005 at rank 56 and has slid steadily to 137 since. The chart shape matches the broader traditional-Spanish cohort almost beat-for-beat. Carlos peaked in 2001, Luis…
- Baby commentary
Jude
Jude peaked in 2015 at rank 144 and now sits at 156 in 2024. The chart looks almost flat, which is unusual for a name this short and this culturally loaded. Most names with a Beat…
- Baby commentary
Julia
Names that stay inside the SSA top 100 for over a century are vanishingly rare. Julia is one of them, with continuous top-200 presence since 1880. The 2001 peak at rank 18 sits in…
- Baby commentary
June
A 25-year mid-century run inside the top 100 is the kind of quiet dominance that doesn't need a single defining cultural anchor. June peaked at rank 39 in 1925 and held the band c…
- Baby commentary
Kaia
Kaia reached its current peak at rank 180 in 2024 and shows no signs yet of slowing. About 19,280 cumulative American girls bear the name on SSA record, with the overwhelming majo…
- Baby commentary
Kayden
Kayden peaked in 2014 at rank 91 and has slid to 125 since. The name is one of the cleanest examples of a 21st-century invented name working through its life cycle. There is no Ka…
- Baby commentary
Kevin
Kevin peaked in 1963 at rank 11 and has slid to 196 in 2024. Nearly 1.2 million American boys have been named Kevin, making it one of the highest-volume names in 20th-century SSA…
- Baby commentary
Kingston
Kingston peaked in 2021 at rank 134 and now sits at 178. The chart shape shows a name that climbed quickly in the late 2000s and 2010s, hit a 2021 peak, and is now releasing modes…
- Baby commentary
Kylie
Kylie reached its peak at rank 47 in 2003 and now sits at 189, with about 120,400 cumulative American girls on SSA record. The arc maps cleanly onto the late-1990s and early-2000s…
- Baby commentary
Lainey
Lainey was outside the SSA top 1000 entirely until 2010. Last year it hit No. 38, an all-time high. The climb is one of the steepest of the past decade for any girl name, and the…
- Baby commentary
Landon
Landon hit its SSA peak in 2010 at the height of the surname-as-firstname wave. Fifteen years later it sits at rank 106, sliding gently but still entrenched in the top 150. This i…
- Baby commentary
Leilani
Leilani peaked in 2022 — meaning the name is still on its growth curve. The current rank of 66 is the highest Leilani has ever held in continental American usage, and the trajecto…
- Baby commentary
Leo
Three letters. Two syllables. One of the fastest climbs of any short name in modern SSA history. Leo went from #190 in 2000 to top 25 in 2022 — and unlike most short-name trends,…
- Baby commentary
Levi
Levi sat at #525 in 1990. By 2022 it was top 10. That is a 500-rank climb in a single generation — among the steepest sustained ascents in the SSA boys' record this century. The s…
- Baby commentary
Liam
In 2017, Liam quietly took the No. 1 spot on the SSA boys' chart and has not let go since. That is eight straight years at the top — longer than Jacob's late-90s reign, longer tha…
- Baby commentary
Lincoln
Lincoln went from rank 762 in 2003 to rank 31 in 2017 — a climb of more than 700 positions in fourteen years. That's one of the steepest sustained ascents in 21st-century American…
- Baby commentary
Lucas
Lucas hit its peak rank in 2017 and has held inside the top 10 every year since. That's a different shape from most popular boys' names, which spike and fade. Lucas plateaued — an…
- Baby commentary
Luis
Luis peaked in 2007 at rank 47 and has slid to 130 since. The chart shape tracks the broader migration patterns of Hispanic-American naming through the 2000s and 2010s. A long hig…
- Baby commentary
Luna
Luna was outside the SSA top 1000 in 2002. By 2022 it had peaked at #11, and today it sits at #13 — a twenty-year ascent that ranks among the steepest girls'-name climbs of the ce…
How we work
Editorial policy →
Topic selection, verification, corrections.
How we gather data
Methodology →
Sources, processing pipeline, limitations.