Sources & Editorial Standards

Popularity data

U.S. popularity figures come from official government birth-name statistics (the U.S. Social Security Administration), and the page shows the years a figure covers. Some names are still shown against an older, multi-year aggregate rather than the newest single-year data — where that's the case, we don't relabel it as more current than it is.

Meaning and origin

We don't publish raw third-party reference text. Where a name's meaning or origin is documented, we write a narrow, independent paraphrase — never a copy-paste of a dictionary or reference-site entry. Where it isn't documented, or the documented readings genuinely disagree, the page says so directly rather than picking one confidently.

When sources disagree

We don't treat every source as equally strong. An official government record or a primary reference outweighs a secondary summary when the two conflict, and we say so rather than quietly picking the version that reads better. When credible sources genuinely disagree and neither clearly outweighs the other, the page presents the disagreement instead of resolving it for you.

Weak evidence is labelled as weak

Not every claim on this site rests on equally strong evidence, and we don't present it as though it does. Where a reading is thin, contested, or inferred rather than documented, the page says so in the same place it makes the claim.

Spelling variants are treated as distinct

Different spellings of a similar-sounding name (accented vs. unaccented, an alternate transliteration, and so on) are treated as their own name here, not silently merged. A shared “sounds like” match is a candidate for review, never automatic proof that two spellings are the same name.

What “no coverage” means

If a page says no dataset currently covers a spelling, that describes the state of our sources — it is not a claim that the name is rare, invalid, or unused in real life.

Two copies of one source aren't two confirmations

If two references ultimately trace back to the same original source, we don't treat them as independent confirmations of the same fact.