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
Ledger
Ledger is one of the most striking examples of celebrity-driven baby naming in recent history. It peaked in SSA data in 2024, with roughly 4,400 recorded U.S. bearers — a concentr…
- Baby commentary
Leslie
Leslie has 270,000 recorded American births and a 1957 peak — which puts it deep in the mid-century generation, carried by women who are now grandmothers. That's the exact positio…
- Baby commentary
Lewis
Lewis peaked all the way back in 1921 at rank 433 with 155,019 total American boys carrying the name, a deep early-twentieth-century legacy that anchors the name's distinctive vin…
- Baby commentary
Lexi
Lexi has a quality that's surprisingly rare in naming: it functions equally well as a standalone name and as a nickname for something longer. With over 27,000 recorded births and…
- Baby commentary
Liana
Liana carries 19,856 cumulative American girls on SSA record, sits at rank 418, and reached its peak in 2021. The chart shows minimal pre-1980 use, gradual late-1990s climb, and a…
- Baby commentary
Lorelai
Lorelai carries 9,322 cumulative American girls on SSA record and currently sits at rank 402, with a fresh 2024 peak. The chart traces a textbook television-driven arc: essentiall…
- Baby commentary
Lorelei
Lorelei arrived in American nurseries carrying the weight of a German legend — a siren who lured sailors onto rocks with her singing. That dark, romantic backstory is exactly what…
- Baby commentary
Louie
Louie hit its 2024 peak at current rank #574 , with 30,507 total SSA bearers. It's the phonetic spelling of Louis — spelling what you say rather than honoring the French silent-S…
- Baby commentary
Lucca
Lucca is the place-name spelling of Luca — the Tuscan city rather than the given name that's currently storming the top 100. That single extra C changes how the name reads: slight…
- Baby commentary
Madelynn
Madelynn is one of several dozen spelling variants that orbit the Hebrew name Magdalene — a name so old and so widely traveled that no single spelling has ever claimed authority o…
- Baby commentary
Mae
Mae peaked in 1918 alongside Edith and Nellie — three names that defined the early twentieth-century American nursery and are all climbing back simultaneously. With over 114,000 r…
- Baby commentary
Maia
Maia is a name that carries an entire cosmos in four letters. She's the eldest of the Pleiades in Greek mythology, the goddess of spring growth in Roman tradition, and through a l…
- Baby commentary
Major
Major peaked in 2017 and holds at current rank #580 , with 21,255 total SSA bearers. It belongs to a specific category of American naming that peaked in the 2010s: title names — n…
- Baby commentary
Makayla
Makayla peaked in 2008 and currently holds #542 , with over 107,000 recorded bearers. It's a phonetic American spelling of Michaela — itself the feminine form of Michael — built t…
- Baby commentary
Maliyah
Maliyah is the Hawaiian-inflected spelling of a sound that American parents have loved in multiple forms — Malia, Amalia, Maliah. With nearly 15,000 recorded births and a 2009 pea…
- Baby commentary
Mallory
Mallory carries 58,213 cumulative American girls on SSA record, sits at rank 412, and reached its peak in 1986. The chart shows a sharp mid-1980s climb that lines up almost exactl…
- Baby commentary
Margo
Margo peaked in 1954 and currently sits at #545 , with over 26,000 recorded bearers. It's the French spelling of Margot — which is itself a diminutive of Marguerite, which comes f…
- Baby commentary
Mario
Mario peaked in 1980 at rank 398 with 150,569 total American boys carrying the name, a substantial cumulative count that places it among the steady late-twentieth-century Italian-…
- Baby commentary
Marlee
Marlee sits at #509 with just over 17,000 recorded bearers — a compact number for a name that feels much more established than that. Its Old English roots connect it to a landscap…
- Baby commentary
Maryam
Maryam carries 12,974 cumulative American girls on SSA record and currently sits at rank 390, with a fresh 2024 peak. The chart traces a clean modern climb: minimal pre-2000 Ameri…
How we work
Editorial policy →
Topic selection, verification, corrections.
How we gather data
Methodology →
Sources, processing pipeline, limitations.