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
Roman
Roman peaked in 2024 — the same year as Cooper, the same year as Thiago. Three names with very little in common, all hitting their all-time American highs at the same moment. The…
- Baby commentary
Rosalie
Rosalie hit a previous high at rank 89 in 1938 and then quietly faded for half a century, dropping out of the U.S. top 1000 entirely in the 1980s. The current rank of 177 reflects…
- Baby commentary
Ruby
Ruby was a top-25 name in 1900, top-100 through 1940, and then fell completely out of the top 300 between 1968 and 1999. The current rank of 63 represents one of the most decisive…
- Baby commentary
Ryker
Ryker peaked in 2018 at rank 119 and has slid to 183 in 2024. The chart shape shows a name that climbed quickly on the kinetic-name wave of the 2010s and is now releasing as paren…
- Baby commentary
Rylee
A spelling-variant of Riley that broke into the top 100 only briefly tells you something about the parent demographic of the late 2000s. Rylee crested at rank 91 in 2010 and has b…
- Baby commentary
Sadie
Sadie started the 20th century as a nickname for Sarah and ended it as a name in its own right. The 2014 peak at the top of the chart's middle band is more interesting than it loo…
- Baby commentary
Savannah
Some names spike and fade. Savannah did neither. The SSA shows it cresting around 2000 at rank 32, but the more telling figure is the band: Savannah has held a top-50 to top-100 p…
- Baby commentary
Sofia
Sofia and Sophia are the same name in two spellings, and the SSA has been counting them separately since 1880. Combine them in 2024 and the result outranks Olivia. Treated separat…
- Baby commentary
Sophia
Sophia held the No. 1 spot in America from 2011 to 2013, then lost it to Emma and never quite got it back. Today it sits at #6 — a remarkable plateau for a name that has logged mo…
- Baby commentary
Sophie
Sophie peaked in 2011 at #45 and is now at #60, but the more interesting number is the gap between Sophie and Sophia . Sophia has spent most of the last two decades inside the SSA…
- Baby commentary
Theo
Theo entered the SSA top 1000 in 1973 at rank 911. By 2023 it had climbed to rank 80 — its all-time peak. That fifty-year journey from outside the top 900 to top 80 makes Theo one…
- Baby commentary
Vincent
Vincent peaked in 1962 and has spent the six decades since drifting between rank 100 and rank 130, never falling out, never climbing dramatically back. That is one of the longest…
- Baby commentary
Walker
Walker peaked in 2022 at rank 73 and has held within ten positions since. That's notable because Walker hasn't had a dominant cultural moment in the last five years — no major fil…
- Baby commentary
Wesley
Wesley peaked in 2024. Not 1924, not in some Victorian revival window — last year. That's an unusual data point for a name with this much heritage; most Old English surname-firsts…
- Baby commentary
Willow
Willow peaked in 2021 at No. 38, the year a particular American naming aesthetic crystallised. Cottagecore was at its peak on TikTok, parents were thinking about hand-thrown ceram…
- Baby commentary
Wrenley
Few names in the current SSA top 200 are this newly invented. Wrenley first appeared in records around 2014 and reached rank 149 by 2024. The form first appeared in records around…
- Baby commentary
Zoey
Zoey is the alternate-spelling version of Zoe that overtook its parent form in American usage during the 2000s. The 2012 peak of Zoey came one year after the I-spelling Zoe peaked…
- Pet commentary
Abby
Abby ranks at #109 with 952 entries and is one of the most consistently friendly-coded female pet names in the rankings. There is almost no version of Abby that reads as serious o…
- Pet commentary
Angel
Angel ranks #130 with 835 entries and is one of the more emotionally direct names in the rankings. Owners who pick Angel are usually communicating something about the relationship…
- Pet commentary
Annie
Annie ranks #152 with 702 entries and is one of the warmest old-American female pet names in the rankings. The name reads as friendly, homey, and entirely without pretense. Owners…
How we work
Editorial policy →
Topic selection, verification, corrections.
How we gather data
Methodology →
Sources, processing pipeline, limitations.