Expert guides, trends, and data-driven analysis on baby names.
Quincy Jones died at 91. His name's peak in Black American naming matches his cultural peak almost exactly. Almost no one has written it down.
Freddie Freeman hit the World Series' first walk-off grand slam. The name 'Freddie' has been falling for 90 years. The reasons aren't time-related.
When a famous Liam dies young, parents of 30,000 living American Liams have a private decision to make. The decision is not in any naming book.
A year after Saltburn, Felix is at its highest American ranking in 80 years. Parents are betting that 'lucky' will outlast a fictional bathtub.
Mateo, Luna, Mia, Sofia: the Spanish-coded names dominating American charts share a survival trait. They pronounce the same way under English mishandling.
Olivia Munn announced her daughter Méi June via surrogate. Reddit called it clumsy. The name actually does the inheritance work Munn's body could not.
Shōgun took 18 Emmys and held the line on Japanese surname-first order in subtitles. English-language coverage flipped it within hours of the wins. The history is older than this.
James Earl Jones died on September 9. The names he carried — Mufasa, Vader, Kunta Kinte — were never neutral. They were vessels for a specific gravitas.
Apple Intelligence puts generative AI on the default device of American parents. The naming consequence isn't weirder names. It is fewer of them.
The Oasis reunion crashed UK ticket servers. Millennial parents got something stranger from the announcement — a quiet realization that their kids' names are now period pieces.
Charli XCX's lime green album turned a spelling variant into a cultural unit of measure. The naming consequences will show up in next May's SSA release.
Jools Lebron's 'demure' meme isn't about voice level. It's a referendum on how we perform tastefulness, including in the names we give our children.