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
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…
- 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…
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How we gather data
Methodology →
Sources, processing pipeline, limitations.