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
Mitchell
Mitchell peaked in 1994 and carries 163,813 SSA records. At rank #904, it's one of the most solidly mid-'90s names on the current chart, a surname-as-first-name that had enormous…
- Baby commentary
Murphy
Murphy peaked in 2024 — meaning it's at its highest point right now — and holds rank #815 with 8,144 SSA records. It's the quintessential Irish surname crossing into given name te…
- Baby commentary
Nancy
Nancy is one of the most historically accumulated names in American naming history. With 1,004,171 total SSA records, it dominated the mid-20th century so thoroughly that it now r…
- Baby commentary
Natasha
Natasha peaked in 1987 and carries every bit of that era's particular glamour, the Cold War thaw, Russian culture entering American pop consciousness, a name that felt simultaneou…
- Baby commentary
Naya
Naya is a name that works across an unusual range of cultural contexts: it carries meaning in Arabic (pure, generous), appears in Sanskrit traditions, and sounds immediately famil…
- Baby commentary
Nazir
Nazir is an Arabic name meaning "one who warns" or "herald" — from the root nadhara , to warn or to give notice. Ranked #945 with a 2024 peak and 3,758 SSA records, it's climbing…
- Baby commentary
Neriah
Neriah is a Hebrew biblical name meaning lamp of God or God is my light, from ner (lamp) and Yah (the divine name). It appears in the Book of Jeremiah as the name of Baruch's fath…
- Baby commentary
Novah
Novah is one of those names that looks like a variant but actually operates differently from Nova on both phonetic and cultural levels. That final H gives Novah a slightly differe…
- Baby commentary
Ocean
Ocean is among the most ambitious nature names in American use: a word that means something planetary in scale, used as a name. With 3,474 SSA records and a peak in 2022, it's bee…
- Baby commentary
Promise
Promise is a virtue name in the tradition of Hope, Faith, and Grace, but with a more active quality than any of those. A promise isn't a state of being; it's a commitment, a word…
- Baby commentary
Rayne
Rayne is a name that sits at the crossroads of a weather word, a French title, and several spelling variations, which is either a rich layering of meanings or a source of perpetua…
- Baby commentary
Remi
Remi is rank #809, peaked in 2021, and carries 3,861 SSA records. It's the French-inflected spelling of Rémy — lighter on paper, warmer in tone — and it's quietly threading the ne…
- Baby commentary
Reuben
Reuben peaked in 1920 and carries 31,851 SSA records. At rank #874 today, it's at that interesting intersection of genuinely old and potentially fresh again, a biblical name that'…
- Baby commentary
Rey
Rey peaked in 2021 and holds rank #821 with 9,431 SSA records. Three letters, one syllable, and two separate cultural forces pushing it: the Spanish word for king, and the Star Wa…
- Baby commentary
Ronnie
Ronnie is the kind of name that belongs completely to a specific American era and is now being reconsidered by parents who love its unpretentious, working-class-cool energy. Ranke…
- Baby commentary
Rosalyn
Rosalyn sits in the rose-name family's softer register, not quite the garden-party formality of Rosalind, not the Spanish lilt of Rosalina, but something distinctly American: appr…
- Baby commentary
Ruthie
Ruthie is Ruth with its hair down, the formal biblical name softened by a diminutive ending that turns solemnity into warmth. SSA data shows 22,271 total records with a peak in 19…
- Baby commentary
Salma
Salma is an Arabic name rooted in salima , meaning peace, safety, or wholeness. It ranks 870 in the SSA data with 10,032 total records and peaked in 1999 — a year when Salma Hayek…
- Baby commentary
Santos
Santos peaked in 2023 and holds rank #833 with 18,473 SSA records. It's a Spanish name rooted in the Catholic feast tradition — a plural form meaning "saints" — and its recent pea…
- Baby commentary
Shlomo
Shlomo is the Hebrew form of Solomon, the name of the wisest king in Jewish tradition, in its most distinctly Ashkenazi, Yiddish-inflected pronunciation. Ranked #977 with a 2024 p…
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How we gather data
Methodology →
Sources, processing pipeline, limitations.