How We Make Name.Baby

Name.Baby is a reference work about the names given to babies in the United States. This page explains where every number on the site comes from, how the trends are computed and how the written descriptions are produced, so you can judge what you read here.

Where the numbers come from

Every rank and birth count is derived from the public baby-name data of the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA), which is compiled from Social Security card applications. The national data runs from 1880 to 2025; state data starts in 1910. The SSA publishes a name only when it was given to at least 5 babies of a sex in a year, so rarer spellings do not appear and a name can be missing in some years. The SSA records the sex on the application, which is why every name has separate girl and boy figures. A rank such as "#2 of boy names" means that in that year and place, exactly one boy name was given to more babies. We rank by births: names given to the same number of babies share a rank and are listed alphabetically, and the next rank skips the shared places, so a list such as the top 1,000 runs a little longer when names tie at its last rank. The totals we quote for a year are the SSA's counts of applications for births in that year. Each year's data is released by the SSA in May; the site shows the newest release available.

How trends are computed

For each name we fit a straight line to its rank over the last ten years (2016–2025) among the names in the top 100, the top 1,000 and the top 10,000 of a sex in a place. The slope of that line is the trend. A negative slope means the rank number is falling, which means the name is rising. A "Trending" list shows the names that rose, with a negative slope and a better rank in 2025 than in 2016 (or no rank then), ordered by how steeply they climb. On the top-100 lists the rest of the top 100 follows in the same order under "Holding steady or slipping"; the top 1,000 and top 10,000 lists show up to 100 rising names. The trend row on a name page is simpler: it compares the rank of five years earlier with this year's and says "Rising" or "Slipping" when the name moved by at least a tenth of its old rank (and at least 5 places). A name that entered the data recently has a shorter history and can show a steep slope on little evidence; the "Since" column on trending lists shows where it started.

How the descriptions are written

The meaning and origin texts are drafted with the help of AI language models from name dictionaries, etymological references and other public sources, then reviewed by Name.Baby editors before they are published. Every description carries the date it was last updated. Factual claims about popularity in a description are checked against the SSA data on the same page. The "curator" bylines you may see are editorial personas, not individual authors; we are moving to a plain "Name.Baby editors" credit across the site.

Pronunciations

Each pronunciation gives a respelling that an English reader can say aloud, the matching notation in the International Phonetic Alphabet, and the language or tradition the pronunciation belongs to. The audio clips are synthesised from the IPA transcription, not recorded by speakers, and some names have several pronunciations because they are used in several languages.

Corrections

If you find a factual error, a wrong pronunciation or a description that should be improved, tell us through the Contact page and name the page it concerns. Corrections to descriptions are reviewed by an editor; corrections to numbers are checked against the SSA source files.

What we do not do

Name.Baby gives no medical, legal or genealogical advice, and a description is not a statement about any person who bears the name. We do not sell the names you save to your account or any other personal data. How accounts and cookies are handled is described on the Privacy page.