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
Madelyn
The SSA tracks at least four major spellings of this name as separate entries: Madeline , Madelyn, Madeleine, and Madilyn. Madelyn currently leads the cluster at #65, with Madelin…
- Baby commentary
Malachi
Malachi peaked in 2006 at rank 119 and has settled at 149 in 2024. The chart shape is unusually flat for a biblical name — most peaked biblical picks slide harder than this. Malac…
- Baby commentary
Margaret
More than 1.26 million Americans have been named Margaret since the SSA started tracking, putting it among the top 10 deepest girls' names in American history. The 1921 peak at ra…
- Baby commentary
Maverick
Maverick wasn't a U.S. boys' name in any meaningful sense before 1986. It entered the SSA top 1000 that year, the same year Top Gun (1986) put Tom Cruise's call sign Maverick in f…
- Baby commentary
Max
Max peaked in 2009 at rank 95 and now sits at 175. Over 165,000 American boys have carried the name as their full given name, not counting the considerably larger group of Maxwell…
- Baby commentary
Melanie
A name that peaked at rank 80 in 1972 and is still in the top 150 fifty years later has settled rather than faded. Melanie has been doing exactly that, currently at #122. Few name…
- Baby commentary
Michael
From 1954 to 1998 — forty-four consecutive years — Michael was the #1 boys' name in America. No other name in SSA history has held the top spot that long. The dethroning, when it…
- Baby commentary
Miguel
Miguel peaked in 2007 at rank 53 and has slid to 189 in 2024. Nearly 189,000 American boys have carried this name. The chart shape is the textbook profile of a Spanish-coded mid-c…
- Baby commentary
Mila
Mila was outside the SSA top 1000 in 2003. Mila Kunis married Ashton Kutcher in 2015. The name peaked at #14 in 2018 and has held a tight band in the high 20s and low 30s since. T…
- Baby commentary
Myla
Myla peaked at rank 186 in 2023 and now sits at the same level, with about 20,700 cumulative American girls on SSA record. The chart history is almost entirely a 2010s and 2020s s…
- Baby commentary
Nathaniel
Nathaniel peaked in 2002 at rank 78 and has slid to 144 in 2024. The chart shape is unusual. A long, gentle 1980s and 1990s climb, a brief plateau around the millennium, and then…
- Baby commentary
Nolan
Nolan peaked in 2015 at rank 59, then did something unusual: it didn't fade. Ten years later it's at rank 64, having held its position better than most 2010s climbers. That kind o…
- Baby commentary
Oaklynn
Oaklynn is one of the youngest names on the SSA top 200, with a current rank of 156 and a peak year that is also the most recent on record. Roughly 9,800 American Oaklynns exist i…
- Baby commentary
Olive
Olive is one of the cleanest revival stories on the SSA chart. The name fell out of the top 1000 entirely between the 1950s and the 2000s, then reappeared and climbed steadily to…
- Baby commentary
Olivia
Shakespeare popularised Olivia in Twelfth Night around 1601, and it took American parents almost exactly four hundred years to make it the most popular girls' name in the country.…
- Baby commentary
Owen
Owen sat outside the SSA top 200 from 1900 through the 1980s — a Welsh name that registered as quaint to most American ears. By 2016 it had peaked at #22, where it has held since.…
- Baby commentary
Paisley
Paisley is named after a Scottish town that became famous for the teardrop textile pattern manufactured there in the 19th century. The pattern itself originated in Persia centurie…
- Baby commentary
Peter
Peter peaked in 1957 at rank 39 and has slid to 192 in 2024. Nearly 588,000 American boys have carried this name. The chart shape is the long descent of a mid-century classic that…
- Baby commentary
Phoebe
Phoebe reached its current peak at rank 183 in 2024 and has been climbing steadily for more than a decade. About 41,750 cumulative American girls bear the name on SSA record. The…
- Baby commentary
Raelynn
Most modern American girls' names have at least a thread of pre-modern history. Raelynn does not. The name first appeared in SSA records around 2003, climbed steadily through the…
How we work
Editorial policy →
Topic selection, verification, corrections.
How we gather data
Methodology →
Sources, processing pipeline, limitations.