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
Beckham
Beckham peaked in 2024 at rank 168, its highest position to date. The name is one of the cleanest examples of a single celebrity-driven naming phenomenon in modern SSA data. There…
- Baby commentary
Bentley
Bentley peaked in 2012 at rank 81 and has slid to 201 in 2024. Over 58,000 American boys have been named Bentley. The chart shape is one of the more dramatic short-arc patterns in…
- Baby commentary
Brooks
Brooks hit its all-time SSA peak last year, in 2024, climbing to rank 67. That's notable because Brooks barely existed as a first name until 2010 — it sat outside the top 1000 for…
- Baby commentary
Bryson
Bryson peaked in 2017 at rank 107 and has slid to 147 in 2024. The chart shape is the textbook trajectory of a 2010s -son surname pick. A slow climb through the 2000s, a brief hig…
- Baby commentary
Callum
Callum is having its SSA moment right now. The 2024 peak at rank 159 is the highest the name has charted in the United States, and the climb has been unusually clean. No celebrity…
- Baby commentary
Catalina
For decades Catalina was an inside-the-Hispanic-community pick that English-speaking American parents rarely considered. That changed quietly through the 2010s, with the name reac…
- Baby commentary
Celeste
Celeste reached an earlier peak at rank 198 in 2004 and now sits at the same rank in 2024, two decades later. About 63,950 cumulative American girls bear the name on SSA record. T…
- Baby commentary
Chase
Chase peaked in 2009 at rank 60 and has slid to 173 in 2024. Nearly 180,000 American boys have carried the name. The chart shape shows a 2000s favorite that is now in steady desce…
- Baby commentary
Christopher
Over 2 million American babies have been named Christopher since SSA tracking began. It was a top 10 boys' name from 1967 to 1998 — a thirty-one-year reign that puts it in the sam…
- Baby commentary
Claire
Claire is one of those rare names that has held the SSA top 100 with remarkably little drama. The 2016 peak at #38 was just one ripple in a long, stable line. Since 1980, Claire h…
- Baby commentary
Cole
Cole peaked in 2002 at rank 65 and has slid to 162 in 2024, putting more than 20 years between its summit and its current position. Over a hundred and fifty thousand boys have bee…
- Baby commentary
Daphne
Daphne reached its current peak at rank 192 in 2024, the same year as the data snapshot, with about 42,400 cumulative American girls on SSA record. The chart climb has been steady…
- Baby commentary
Dawson
Dawson peaked in 1999 at rank 110 and has slid to 139 in 2024. The chart shape is one of the textbook examples of a single TV show driving a name's climb. Dawson's Creek aired on…
- Baby commentary
Declan
Declan peaked in 2019 at rank 105 and has settled at 131 since. The chart shape is unusual for an Irish-coded name. A quiet 1990s appearance, a steady 2000s climb, a 2010s peak, a…
- Baby commentary
Dominic
Dominic peaked in 2013 and has been quietly holding rank 108 ever since. That is unusual. Most names that peak in the early 2010s are sliding harder by 2025. Dominic's plateau sug…
- Baby commentary
Easton
Easton was rank 723 in 2000 and rank 76 by 2016 — an ascent of more than 600 positions in sixteen years. The trajectory mirrors the broader -ston surname-first cluster (Weston, Pr…
- Baby commentary
Eli
Eli climbed from rank 308 in 1990 to rank 53 in 2012 — a 250-position ascent in twenty-two years. The trajectory is one of the cleanest examples of a short biblical name riding th…
- Baby commentary
Eliana
Eliana hit its highest-ever SSA rank of #18 in 2024 — the year of this writing, with the climb still active. The name was outside the top 1000 in 2000. The trajectory from invisib…
- Baby commentary
Ellie
Ellie reached its highest-ever SSA rank of #21 in 2024, a year that saw the name continuing to climb rather than plateau. What makes Ellie unusual is that it began as a nickname —…
- Baby commentary
Eloise
Eloise hit its peak rank in 2024 — meaning it is still climbing at the moment this article publishes. That's an unusual position for a name with medieval Latin roots and a 20th-ce…
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Editorial policy →
Topic selection, verification, corrections.
How we gather data
Methodology →
Sources, processing pipeline, limitations.