Full comparison
Up to 8 names · 146 years of records · one link to share
A shortlist does not shrink by being read again. Line the names up against each other and the same facts appear under every one of them — the rank today, the peak, how many classmates will share it, how the initials land against your last name — and the differences you have been circling stop being a feeling.
Add the names you keep coming back to. Everything else is optional.
Six sections, the same for every name on the list.
All 146 years of the birth records, every name drawn on the same axis rather than in its own little box — so the taller line really is the more common name — plus a rank strip that shows how far apart your shortlist actually sits.
Rank, births, five-year movement, the best year on record, the classroom count, living bearers, syllables and the strongest states — one row each, the name the records favor marked, and a scoreboard on top.
The meaning and how settled it is, the recorded forms it traveled through, how it is said, the short forms and what each is used for, the people who carried it, where it charts abroad, and how likely it is to feel dated in fifteen years.
Every name written out in full with your last name and a middle name: the three initials that end up on a suitcase, checked against the monograms a child gets teased for, plus the shared endings, accidental rhymes and vowel runs.
Two names on your list that arrive at the same nickname, that rhyme with each other, or that turn out to be one name in two spellings — so a shortlist of six is not quietly a shortlist of five.
One link anyone can open with no account and no cost, a card that unfurls with the names when you paste it into a chat, a print layout that becomes a clean PDF, and one tap to turn the same names into a family vote.
Three steps, and one source you can check.
Type them, tap them from the row of names other parents are comparing, or pull your whole shortlist in with one button. Every name resolves against the records as you type, so nothing fails at the end.
Optional, and it stays on the pages you make. Without it you still get every number; with it you also get the monogram and how each first name sits against your surname.
The report is one page with its own address. Send it to the people with opinions — they need no account — or turn the same names into a family vote and count the answers.
Every figure on the report is read from the US Social Security Administration's birth records — 1880 to 2025, 117,820 names — with 4 more national statistics agencies behind the international picture. Ranks, counts and peaks are measured; where a line is a projection rather than a record, the report says so on the line that carries it.
What you will not find is a verdict on taste. The report tells you what the records say and what your surname does to each name. The choice stays where it belongs.
Read the full methodology →The six that come up before anyone builds one.
Every name page on the site carries a heart that drops the name onto your shortlist — the builder above pulls the whole list in with one button.
Build the comparison, send the link to whoever has an opinion, and let the numbers do the arguing. Nobody you share it with needs an account.
Free to start · no account needed · everyone you invite votes in one tap