Updates & Changelog

Selected name profiles, including Isabella, Elizabeth, Chloe, Aurora, Brielle, and Jolene, now separate documented meanings from disputed or multiple histories. Identified repetitions were corrected in older guides. Happiness and light lists distinguish literal meanings from associations, and unsupported rarity rankings were replaced with guidance on dated comparisons. Missing catalog meanings no longer imply a scholarly disagreement. Name-detail state comparisons now require the same complete annual window for every included state. This review does not establish that every catalog entry or older article has been independently verified.

The production import was missing 2024 across all 51 jurisdictions. The official SSA state download was retrieved and checked on October 27: 95,864 released 2024 rows and 2,788,384 summed disclosed counts. California 2024, the other state/year reports, state indexes, and observed 2024-to-2025 comparisons now use that restored baseline. National data and the coverage limits of other years are separate. Source fingerprint and rank method.

The methodology now separates local import filters from official privacy limits. Reports no longer infer actual sibling or twin pairings, national origin shares, or religious identity from aggregate counts. Invalid zero-baseline growth multipliers and mismatched state/national ratios were removed. Identified name histories and their repeated claims in guides and collections were corrected. Earlier changelog descriptions of those features are historical and are superseded by the current report scope.

New flagship report at /reports/top-baby-names-2024/: an imported selection of the 2024 US ranking from SSA data released May 2025. Liam's eighth straight year at #1, Olivia's sixth, the vintage girl-name revival (Daisy, Clara, Millie, Josie, Eloise), seven names breaking into the top 100 for the first time, and the long-arc concentration story — the top 10 girls' names now cover just 11.23% of births versus 31.65% in 1980. CC BY 4.0; press-quotable APA + plain-text citation formats included.

Every /famous/{slug} page across the catalog now ships with a 5-paragraph editorial biography (~280 words, etymology in the closing paragraph). Adds roughly 800,000 words of new editorial content site-wide. Drafted with AI assistance, reviewed and fact-checked against verifiable biographical record only — banned-filler audit, banned hallucinated specifics, gendered-pronoun verification.

New /compare tool produces a permanent /compare/{a}-vs-{b} URL for any pair of names. Shows side-by-side popularity charts, peak-year comparison, current-rank delta, crossover years, and strongest states for each name. Built on the same SSA dataset (1880–2025) as the rest of the site.

Every name detail page now has a "Where in the US Is X Most Popular?" section listing the strongest and weakest observed state ranks (an ordinal comparison, not a per-capita rate). Built on a 6.5M-row import of the SSA state-level dataset (1910–2023). Skipped automatically for names with no state coverage.

New /top hub: this year's top 100 by gender, all-time top 50, and the #1 winner of every decade since 1880. Direct entry point for the highest-volume "most popular baby names" search intent.

Three new flagship reports added to the Reports hub: State Distinctiveness (which names are most over-represented in each state vs the national average), Twin Name Patterns, and Religious Naming Trends. Each is grounded in SSA data with full methodology notes.

Two more analytical reports: Sibling Name Patterns and Name Length & Phonetics. Quote-ready findings designed to be cited by parenting media and naming-focused outlets.

Four new tools at /tools: What's Trending Now (year-over-year risers and fallers), Numerology Calculator, Sibling Name Match Score, and Name → State Lookup.

Three browseable atlas hubs joined the Reports module: all 51 US states, 15 decades (1880s–2020s), and a year-by-year browser covering 1880–2025. Plus 5,763 state-year pages and 4 Census-region pages.

Imported the US Social Security Administration's state-level baby-name dataset — 2,430,917 rows of (state, year, gender, name, count, rank). Powers the new state-detail and state-year-detail pages, plus the per-name strongest-states module. Streaming batch INSERT pipeline; full deploy is a single 45MB compressed dump.

Four flagship reports launched: The State of Baby Naming 2026 (145-year retrospective with 22 quote-ready findings), Names That Died, Pop Culture × Baby Naming, and Origins of Baby Naming. Each is fully cited, grounded in SSA records, and includes a press kit with copy-to-clipboard quote-ready statements.

Real publisher signals: About page with founder bio, Methodology documenting full SSA data attribution and limitations, Press kit with quote-ready facts and citation formats (APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard), and Contact with response policy. Author signature on every page is "Marvin Tang" — not a generic admin or "9BabyNames team" placeholder.

Added Person + Organization JSON-LD on /about, Article markup on every tip + report, BreadcrumbList on every name detail page, Dataset markup citing the SSA source, and FAQPage markup on tip clusters. WebApplication markup on /tools/* describes each tool as a free reference application.