About BabyNameDex

BabyNameDex is a free, English-language baby name reference. For each name we cover what it means, where it comes from, how its popularity has moved over time, and which names sit near it in sound or style. The goal is a page you can read in two minutes and come away actually knowing something about the name.

Who writes this

BabyNameDex is written and maintained by a small independent editorial team. There is no user-generated content on the site — every entry is compiled and edited in-house.

Where our information comes from

Meaning and origin entries are compiled by our editorial team from etymological and historical reference works and written in our own words. Name etymologies are often contested, so read these as the most widely accepted account rather than the only one.

Popularity rankings are compiled by our editorial team from publicly reported birth-registration statistics. They are a guide to relative popularity, not an official government figure, and we do not republish any agency's dataset. Treat a rank on this site as approximate.

What popularity data cannot tell you

Rankings measure how often a name was registered, not how good a name is. A name can fall in the rankings simply because it was heavily used a generation earlier. Rankings also miss names that are common within a particular community but rare nationally, and they count spelling variants separately — so a name that sounds very common can look uncommon on paper.

Corrections

If you find something wrong — a meaning, an origin, a rank that looks off — tell us and we will fix it or remove it. Write to our contact page.

How the site is funded

BabyNameDex is free to read and is supported by advertising. Ads are served by Google AdSense. Advertising has no influence on which names we cover or what we write about them. See our privacy policy for what advertising and analytics collect.