The More4Kids Baby Names directory is built to be a source parents, journalists, and researchers can trust. This page explains where our data comes from, how we verify it, and how we correct mistakes.
Popularity data & rankings
All U.S. popularity figures — annual rankings, birth counts, peak years, and the year-by-year charts on every name page — come directly from the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) national name data, which covers every year from 1880 to the present. Our figures were last refreshed in May 2026 to include the SSA’s most recent annual release. Rankings are calculated separately for boys and girls, exactly as the SSA reports them.
Meanings, origins & etymology
Name meanings and origins are researched from established onomastic (name-study) references and historical sources. Because the origin of a name is sometimes genuinely debated by scholars, every name carries a confidence level:
- High — the meaning and origin are well documented and widely agreed upon.
- Medium — the general origin is clear but the precise meaning is debated or has more than one credible interpretation.
- Low — the name is modern, invented, or of uncertain derivation; we say so plainly rather than guess.
Where a meaning is genuinely uncertain, we present the competing interpretations instead of picking one and calling it definitive.
Pronunciation audio
Each name includes an audio pronunciation. Clips are generated from a verified phonetic transcription of the name and machine-checked to confirm the spoken result matches the intended pronunciation before it goes live.
How we keep the data accurate
Name popularity shifts every year, and text written once can drift out of date. To prevent that, an automated fact-checking system continuously re-reads our most-visited name pages and compares every popularity claim in the writing — phrases like “top 100,” “number one,” and historical “#1 from year to year” statements — against the underlying SSA data. Any statement that no longer matches the data is corrected, and every correction is re-verified against the source before it is published.
Found something wrong?
We would rather hear about a mistake than leave it live. If a fact on any name page looks off, please let us know and we’ll check it against the SSA record.