I Built a Tool That Tells You How Rare Your Name Actually Is, Would Love Some Feedback
So a while back I got curious how many people actually share my name, and every tool I found just gave me one flat number and nothing else. No history, no context, nothing. That bugged me enough that I ended up building my own version, and it kinda spiraled into a much bigger project than I expected. Sharing it here since I'd genuinely love some feedback from people who know data and UX better than me.
You can try it here: howmanyofme.site
What the Tool Currently Does
- Pulls from over 140 years of Social Security Administration birth records for US first name data
- Estimates how many people are currently alive with a given name, not just how many were ever born with it
- Shows a full popularity trend chart from 1880 to today
- Gives meaning, linguistic origin, and a numerology breakdown for each name
- Breaks down age distribution and gender split
- Pulls worldwide bearer estimates so you can see how a name performs outside the US too
- Surfaces famous people who share the name, pulled live from Wikipedia
Why I'm Sharing It
I want to make the accuracy and depth better, and I know there's a ton of stuff I haven't thought of. Specifically curious about:
- Better ways to handle rare or non-English names, where the underlying data gets thin fast
- Other public datasets that could sharpen the estimates
- Whether expanding past the US makes sense, and if so what data source would even work for that
- Whether people want more trend/prediction stuff, or if the current historical chart is already enough
What I'd Like to Know
If you try it out, genuinely curious about:
- Does the estimate feel roughly right for your own name
- What feels missing or like it'd add real insight, more history, comparisons to similar names, something else
- Any thoughts on the data itself, or just general UX feedback on how the results are laid out
Even small "hey this part confused me" comments would help a lot.
Try It Yourself
Head to howmanyofme.site, type in your name, review the results, and let me know what improvements I could make.`
Top comments (0)