Browse our trends articles on baby and pet names.
The British royal family has always set naming trends, and right now the House of Windsor is giving us more material than ever. From the timeless reign of Elizabeth to the fresh energy of Archie and Lilibet, here's how royal names are shaping American nurseries.
What names will parents be choosing in 2027? We dug into the data to find the names currently accelerating fastest — the ones that have recently cracked the rankings with surprisingly small historical footprints, signaling that their big moment is still ahead.
Penelope jumped from obscurity to #28 after Bridgerton. Arya hit #162 after Game of Thrones. Wednesday entered the rankings after the Netflix series. The data makes for a compelling story.
Stand at any dog park in America and call out "Oliver." Odds are, both a child and a golden retriever will look up. That's not a coincidence — it's a cultural shift hiding in plain sight. We dug into 723,185 pet licensing records and found that just 1,610 human-style names (4.5% of all unique options) cover 310,457 pets — nearly 43% of the entire dataset. Fido is extinct. Spot is a relic. And the names climbing the charts — Milo, Luna, Charlie, Oliver — are the same ones parents are weighing for their newborns. This is the story of how that happened, and what it means.
Somewhere in America, someone just called out "Rocky!" across a dog park. A 2-kilogram Chihuahua came sprinting back, ears flat, tiny legs a blur. This was not irony. This was love — the specific, extravagant love of a Chihuahua owner who looked at their pocket-sized dog and decided: you deserve a name that could stop a room. Real licensing data shows 273 Chihuahuas named Rocky, making it the breed's #4 most popular name. That number is the jumping-off point for a deep dive into one of pet naming's most fascinating subcultures: the Chihuahua owner's peculiar genius for pairing enormous names with extremely small dogs.
Most cat owners reach for Luna, Lucy, or Oliver. Taylor Swift reaches for a complete television character name with a full dramatic backstory attached. Her three cats — Meredith Grey (2011), Olivia Benson (2014), and Benjamin Button (2019) — aren't just cute names. They're a consistent artistic statement about what a name should carry. We ran the numbers across our dataset of 35,806 real pet names to see whether Swifties copied her. The results are surprising, and the pattern they reveal about Taylor's taste is genuinely fascinating.
Cassian broke into the top 700. Azriel entered the top 700 too. Rhys is at #354 and climbing. BookTok's influence on baby naming is real, measurable, and genuinely fascinating.
Using last names as first names is one of America's most enduring naming traditions — and right now it's bigger than ever. We looked at the data to find the best surname-style names for your baby.
Violet is now #15. Hazel hit #19. Willow, Ivy, Juniper, Sage — these names aren't just pretty. They're part of a cultural shift toward the natural, the handmade, and the quietly radical.
When Kylie Jenner named her daughter Stormi in 2018, the name jumped from obscurity to rank #790. Celebrity baby names are natural experiments in naming influence — here's the data.
When Frozen hit theaters in 2013, Elsa was a quietly old-fashioned name. Within a year, it was everywhere. Pop culture doesn't just entertain us — it names our children.
From Olivia to Delilah, these are the girl names every parent is considering right now — with the data to back it up.