Source Policy

Popularity data

U.S. popularity figures come from official government birth-name statistics (the U.S. Social Security Administration). Where we have a name in the current dataset, we show the year the rank comes from directly on the page. A small number of names on this site 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.

How we rank confidence

We prefer evidence in roughly this order, and a page's wording reflects which tier applies:

• Openly licensed or authoritative reference sources
• Verified first-party or public government/official data
• Reviewed reference and dictionary sources
• Deterministic, rule-based inference (e.g. how a name is likely to sound, based on its letters)
• Explicitly unknown — stated as such, never filled in with a guess

Spelling variants are treated as distinct

Different spellings of a similar-sounding name (accented vs. unaccented, an alternate transliteration, etc.) are treated as their own identity on this site, not silently merged. A shared “sounds like” match is a candidate for review, never automatic proof 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.

Independent copies of one source aren't double corroboration

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