Browse our analysis articles on baby and pet names.
Wednesday Season 2 Part 1 dropped this week. The first season moved the name Wednesday +35 percent in 2023 SSA data and accelerated Raven, Enid, and the broader gothic register. Whether any of that survives the second-season test is what the data will tell us in 2027.
Giant schnauzers do not get cute names. Their owners pick names with weight — Bruno, Otto, Magnus, Greta. Monty's Westminster win pushed the entire register into wider circulation.
Reed, Sue, Ben, Johnny. Marvel's Fantastic Four didn't pick those names — Stan Lee did, in 1961. The asymmetric way today's parents are willing to use them is one of the cleanest demonstrations of how vintage naming actually functions.
Connie Francis died at 87 just as TikTok rediscovered her 1962 record. The thing TikTok actually rediscovered isn't her. It's a sound register — short i, terminal ee, half-rhyme — that American baby naming has been quietly missing for fifty years.
Krypto did something rescue marketing has been trying to do for decades: he reframed the shelter dog from object of pity into power fantasy. The naming data shows the moment that flip happened.
After Snyderverse, Clark fell from the SSA top 320 to outside the top 800. The Gunn-era Superman is the first cultural product in years that could plausibly move it back. The data on superhero names suggests it won't be quick.
Pixar's Elio flopped on a $250M budget. The interesting reading isn't about Pixar — it's about what its title says about a decade of soft, vowel-heavy boy names that the algorithm finally optimized into exhaustion.
Championship MVP names follow a predictable timetable in SSA data. After OKC's Game 7 win, Shai is on a clock. The cleaner story is the surname Gilgeous-Alexander, which will not become a baby name no matter how good he gets.
Disney remakes usually push their character names onto dogs. Stitch broke that rule. The data shows where the name actually landed — and why an alien character earned a permission slip a Lassie or a Pongo never did.
Show dogs have always lived under two names. In 2025, the practice is spreading to ordinary pet homes — and the divide tells us something about how we want our animals to be seen.
Summer-coded names assigned during May and June adoptions persist through pets' whole lives, producing 12-15 year echoes in licensing data.
The 2024 SSA release shows Sofia at #10. The first Spanish-spelled name to enter the American girls' top 10. The crossover Mateo started has accelerated.