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
Kyren
Kyren peaked in 2024 — its current peak — sits at rank #812, and has 3,485 SSA records. A name still climbing is a name worth understanding clearly, because what you're choosing t…
- Baby commentary
Langston
Langston is a name that carries a specific cultural gravity most names can only dream of. Ranked #909 with a 2016 peak and 7,089 SSA records, it belongs to a category of names tha…
- Baby commentary
Leanna
Leanna is a soft, flowing name that blends the Lee- prefix with the -anna suffix, drawing on Hebrew roots while feeling distinctly American in its construction. SSA data shows 25,…
- Baby commentary
Legacy
Legacy is one of the most explicitly intentional names in American naming culture — a word name that declares its meaning without any translation needed. Ranked #954 with a 2021 p…
- Baby commentary
Leroy
Leroy peaked in 1924 and has 200,702 SSA records, a century of American use. At rank #862 today, it's genuinely on the fringes of the current naming conversation, but not extinct.…
- Baby commentary
Lettie
Lettie is a Victorian diminutive that has quietly been winning over parents who want something old but not obvious, a name that feels discovered rather than assigned. At rank 936…
- Baby commentary
Lilyana
Lilyana occupies a specific and appealing niche: it's the Slavic and Russian variant of Lilliana, carrying the lily flower's meaning with a softer, more exotic ending. SSA data sh…
- Baby commentary
Livia
Livia is a Roman name with imperial credentials: Livia Drusilla was the wife of Augustus Caesar and among the most politically powerful women in the early Roman Empire. It's been…
- Baby commentary
Loyal
Loyal peaked in 2022 and carries 5,705 SSA records. At rank #877, it's a virtue name with a very particular energy, not pious like Grace or Faith, not grand like Noble or Valor, b…
- Baby commentary
Lucien
Lucien is the French form of Lucian — and it wears that Frenchness gracefully, with a soft final-n that makes the whole name feel more fluid than its Latin-Roman ancestor. Ranked…
- Baby commentary
Luella
Luella peaked in 1918 and has 32,252 SSA records: a name with a genuinely Victorian pedigree that's been making a quiet return as parents discover that its three-syllable melody a…
- Baby commentary
Lyanna
Lyanna exists because of one source: George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire , and the HBO adaptation that made that source available to millions who never read the books. Wit…
- Baby commentary
Makari
Makari is a Greek name meaning "blessed" or "happy" that has been almost entirely invisible in American naming until very recently. Ranked #968 with a 2024 peak and just 1,556 SSA…
- Baby commentary
Malaysia
Malaysia sits at SSA rank 857 with 10,753 total records and a peak in 2014 — making it one of the more durable place-name-as-given-name experiments of the 2000s and 2010s. Unlike…
- Baby commentary
Marcellus
Marcellus is one of the great Roman names — full, formal, Latin, with a drumroll of syllables that makes it unmistakable. Ranked #948 with a 2021 peak and 9,392 SSA records, it's…
- Baby commentary
Marleigh
Marleigh is Marley with an elevated spelling — the -leigh ending swapping in for the more casual -ley and giving the name a slightly more formal, almost British visual quality. SS…
- Baby commentary
Massimo
Massimo peaked in 2023 and carries 3,775 SSA records. At rank #886, it's an Italian name making genuine inroads in American birth records, part of a broader wave of Italian given…
- Baby commentary
Matheo
Matheo is one of those spellings that feels like a deliberate statement. Ranked #856 with a 2024 peak and 2,104 SSA records, it's the continental European take on Matthew — stripp…
- Baby commentary
Mathew
Mathew is the single-t spelling variant of Matthew — a minor orthographic adjustment to one of the most enduring names in Christian naming history. Ranked #939 with a 1990 peak an…
- Baby commentary
Maurice
Maurice peaked in 1921 and carries 136,109 SSA records — a name that was at the absolute center of American naming a century ago, retreated for decades, and is now in the very ear…
How we work
Editorial policy →
Topic selection, verification, corrections.
How we gather data
Methodology →
Sources, processing pipeline, limitations.