Waiting on the anatomy scan, or staying Team Green? The two-shortlist method: why the popular shortcut doesn't hold up in the official data, and how to run two lists without doubling the work.
Babycare
Do baby name initials matter? Less than you'd fear: 640 of 676 first-and-surname initial pairs have nothing to avoid. The 60-second check, the lookup table, and the full word list.
Your surname is fixed — that makes it the best filter you have. Three checks with measured effects: syllable rhythm, the same-letter juncture, and the read-aloud test, plus a worked example with eight candidates.
A step-by-step way to choose a baby name: five checks in a fixed order, each one measurably shrinking the pool — from 31,227 published names down to two or three finalists.
Seventeen names sat outside the Top 500 for forty years or more and returned. The base rate for that comeback is about one in six. The full list, the rule that built it, and the midcentury names still waiting.
Browse baby names by style — vintage, nature, short, elegant — with the honest numbers behind each label: how style shares have moved since 1950, and the two checks we run on every list we publish.