“I love that site”*
Nancy’s Baby Names was founded in early 2006, and — as far as I can tell — it was one of the very first baby name blogs.
The site currently has two main sections: the blog, updated every weekday, and the directory, featuring bazillions of baby name popularity graphs. And by “bazillions” I mean well over 100,000.
The Nancy behind the site is me, Nancy Man. I’m a Harvard-educated, Colorado-based writer who has been fascinated by names since childhood. (The name that kicked things off for me was Flavilla.)
My mission is to dig up baby names that have cool stories/explanations. I do deep-dives into the U.S. baby name data to unearth gems like Trilby, Korla, Thedy, Iuma, Leneve, Calizza, Qiana, Tierney, and Uldine. I’ve written about thousands of these names — some for the first time ever on the internet — and I’ve got thousands more on deck. To see everything I’ve found so far in chronological order, check out the History in the Names project.
Over the years, my name-writing has been cited by a bunch of other publications, including New York Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, Woman’s Day, Redbook, Daily Mail, Mental Floss, HuffPo, Vice.com, and The Week. My favorite citation so far would have to be the time the U.S. Census Bureau linked to my post about Emancipation Proclamation Coggeshall.
If you’re an OG and you prefer RSS, here’s the feed: http://www.nancy.cc/feed/.
To get in touch, here’s the contact form.
Finally, you’d like to help support this site, please check out my Patreon page — either click that link or this nifty button here:
Become a Patron!*The quote at the top comes from a Reddit thread about the movie Willow, which gave a boost to the names Sorsha and Elora back in the late ’80s.