Where our names come from

United States

US names come from the US Social Security Administration: Baby Names from Social Security Card Applications, National Data. CC0 1.0, public domain. Data updated May 8, 2026.

France

Source : Insee, Fichier des prénoms, édition 2025. Licence Ouverte 2.0. Data updated 16/07/2026.

Germany

German names come from the open data of twelve cities: first names given to newborns, 2018–2025. The data has been combined, filtered and re-sorted (Daten geändert). Sources:

• BerlinOnline GmbH, auf Basis von Daten des Berliner Landesamtes für Bürger- und Ordnungsangelegenheiten (LABO), CC BY 3.0 DE, https://github.com/berlin/haeufige-vornamen-berlin
• Datenquelle: dl-de/by-2-0: Landeshauptstadt München – opendata.muenchen.de
• Quelle: Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf – opendata.duesseldorf.de (dl-de/by-2-0)
• Datenquelle: Stadt Essen – opendata.essen.de (dl-de/by-2-0)
• Stadt Leipzig, Standesamt – opendata.leipzig.de (dl-de/by-2-0)
• Stadt Aachen, Standesamt – offenedaten.aachen.de (dl-de/by-2-0)
• Stadt Wuppertal, Standesamt – offenedaten-wuppertal.de (CC BY 4.0)
• Stadt Heilbronn, Standesamt – opendata.heilbronn.de (CC BY 4.0)
• Stadt Mülheim an der Ruhr – geo.muelheim-ruhr.de (CC BY 3.0 DE)
• Stadt Köln (dl-de/zero-2-0)
• Stadt Dortmund (dl-de/zero-2-0)
• Bundesstadt Bonn (CC0)

License text: www.govdata.de/dl-de/by-2-0. The cities do not endorse or approve Babynamed.

Spain

Spanish names come from the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE), "Apellidos y nombres más frecuentes": name frequencies by decade of birth, for people born 2020–2024 (population on January 1, 2025). Elaboración propia con datos extraídos del sitio web del INE: www.ine.es

Accented spellings come from the newborn name lists of the Canary Islands Statistics Institute and the Statistical Institute of Catalonia. Fuente: Instituto Canario de Estadística (ISTAC), updated February 6, 2026. Fuente: elaboración propia a partir de datos del Idescat. Updated July 16, 2026.

The data has been processed and reorganized. These institutes did not take part in Babynamed and do not endorse or approve it.

Turkey

Turkish names come from the "Most Given Baby Names" data on the Turkish Statistical Institute's population statistics portal (2018–2025, national and province level). Source: TÜİK. The data has been processed and reorganized; TÜİK has not approved or endorsed Babynamed.

Meanings and origins

We wrote the meaning and origin under each name using facts from Wiktionary and Wikipedia (English, French, German and Spanish editions), Wikidata and Charlotte M. Yonge's History of Christian Names (1884). The text is our own; we did not copy their wording.

Experts don't always agree on where a name comes from, so treat an origin as the most likely answer, not the only one. When we couldn't find a reliable meaning, we left it blank instead of guessing.

Holy-book line

The line saying that a name appears in the Bible, the Torah or the Quran comes from a list we keep by hand, including different spellings of the same name. It states a fact only; it does not say which tradition a name belongs to.

Full Analysis

Claude, an AI model by Anthropic, writes the meaning, slang and nickname findings from its own knowledge. For the origin, it searches only Wikipedia and Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0) and links the page it used.

The slang and swear-word check also looks up the exact name in Shutterstock's "List of Dirty, Naughty, Obscene and Otherwise Bad Words" (CC BY 4.0). The report shows what stands out and may miss slang that's only used in some places.

We check the .com domain through Verisign RDAP and the usernames on GitHub and X. Results show the day they were checked and can change at any time. A check is not a reservation.