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
Isla
Isla was outside the SSA top 1000 every year from 1880 to 2007. The name peaked at #35 in 2021 and has held that range since. Few names have made this kind of zero-to-top-50 climb…
- Baby commentary
Ivy
Beyoncé and Jay-Z named their daughter Blue Ivy in January 2012. Ivy was outside the SSA top 200 at the time. By 2024 it had peaked at #36 — its highest-ever position — and the cl…
- Baby commentary
Jack
Disclosure: I am writing this with my own name. Jack peaked in 1927, fell out of the top 100 by 1965, and clawed its way back to top 20 by 2010. The middle of that arc — the four…
- Baby commentary
Jackson
Jackson hit its all-time U.S. peak in 2013, with over 14,000 boys receiving the name in a single year. It was the most popular surname-style first name of the early 2010s — and th…
- Baby commentary
Jameson
Jameson peaked in 2019 at rank 100 and has slid gently to 117 since. The chart pattern is a familiar one. A 2010s climb, a brief plateau at the top, and a soft post-peak retreat t…
- Baby commentary
Jaxon
Jaxon was rank 879 in 2000 and rank 41 by 2016 — an ascent of more than 800 positions in sixteen years. That's one of the steepest climbs in modern SSA records for any boys' name.…
- Baby commentary
Jaxson
Jaxson peaked in 2015 at rank 64 and has slid to 171 in 2024, dropping over 100 ranks in less than a decade. This is the steepest of three competing spellings of the same phonetic…
- Baby commentary
Jayden
Jayden was the 4th most popular boys' name in America in 2010. Pull up the SSA top-10 for that year and Jayden sits between Ethan and Jacob, ahead of Michael, William, and Alexand…
- Baby commentary
Josephine
Josephine peaked at the SSA top 50 in 1918, fell out of the top 100 by the 1960s, and spent forty years drifting through the lower hundreds before the long climb back. The current…
- Baby commentary
Juan
Juan peaked in 2005 at rank 56 and has slid steadily to 137 since. The chart shape matches the broader traditional-Spanish cohort almost beat-for-beat. Carlos peaked in 2001, Luis…
- Baby commentary
Jude
Jude peaked in 2015 at rank 144 and now sits at 156 in 2024. The chart looks almost flat, which is unusual for a name this short and this culturally loaded. Most names with a Beat…
- Baby commentary
Julia
Names that stay inside the SSA top 100 for over a century are vanishingly rare. Julia is one of them, with continuous top-200 presence since 1880. The 2001 peak at rank 18 sits in…
- Baby commentary
June
A 25-year mid-century run inside the top 100 is the kind of quiet dominance that doesn't need a single defining cultural anchor. June peaked at rank 39 in 1925 and held the band c…
- Baby commentary
Kaia
Kaia reached its current peak at rank 180 in 2024 and shows no signs yet of slowing. About 19,280 cumulative American girls bear the name on SSA record, with the overwhelming majo…
- Baby commentary
Kayden
Kayden peaked in 2014 at rank 91 and has slid to 125 since. The name is one of the cleanest examples of a 21st-century invented name working through its life cycle. There is no Ka…
- Baby commentary
Kevin
Kevin peaked in 1963 at rank 11 and has slid to 196 in 2024. Nearly 1.2 million American boys have been named Kevin, making it one of the highest-volume names in 20th-century SSA…
- Baby commentary
Kingston
Kingston peaked in 2021 at rank 134 and now sits at 178. The chart shape shows a name that climbed quickly in the late 2000s and 2010s, hit a 2021 peak, and is now releasing modes…
- Baby commentary
Kylie
Kylie reached its peak at rank 47 in 2003 and now sits at 189, with about 120,400 cumulative American girls on SSA record. The arc maps cleanly onto the late-1990s and early-2000s…
- Baby commentary
Lainey
Lainey was outside the SSA top 1000 entirely until 2010. Last year it hit No. 38, an all-time high. The climb is one of the steepest of the past decade for any girl name, and the…
- Baby commentary
Landon
Landon hit its SSA peak in 2010 at the height of the surname-as-firstname wave. Fifteen years later it sits at rank 106, sliding gently but still entrenched in the top 150. This i…
How we work
Editorial policy →
Topic selection, verification, corrections.
How we gather data
Methodology →
Sources, processing pipeline, limitations.