We just crossed 1,500 baby names on BabyNamePick.com — covering 30+ origins from Irish to Japanese to Polynesian. Here's what I learned building a multilingual name database from scratch.
The Challenge
Most baby name sites focus on English names. But parents today come from everywhere, and they want names that reflect their heritage. We set out to build a database that covers:
- Western European: Irish, British, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
- Nordic & Celtic: Nordic, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish
- Eastern European: Russian, Slavic, Polish, Czech
- Middle Eastern: Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish
- South Asian: Indian, Sanskrit
- East Asian: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai
- African: Pan-African names from multiple traditions
- Pacific: Hawaiian, Polynesian, Filipino
- Americas: American, Latin American
Data Structure
Each name entry looks like this:
{
"name": "Akira",
"meaning": "Bright and clear",
"origin": "japanese",
"gender": "unisex",
"styles": ["classic", "strong"]
}
The styles array is key for discovery. Parents don't always search by origin — they search by vibe: "nature names," "strong names," "vintage names." Our style tags include:
- classic, modern, vintage, elegant
- nature, strong, short, whimsical
- biblical, mythological, royal, literary
- musical, spiritual, space
Lessons Learned
1. Romanization is tricky
Chinese names like "Qian" or Japanese names like "Koharu" need careful romanization. We standardized on the most common English transliteration for each name.
2. Gender varies by culture
A name that's strictly male in one culture might be unisex in another. "Kai" is male in Japanese but unisex in Hawaiian. We went with the most internationally recognized gender assignment.
3. Meanings are layered
Many names have multiple meanings across languages. "Tao" means "the way" in Chinese philosophy but also "peach." We include the most culturally significant meaning first.
4. US Top 100 names drive traffic
No matter how interesting your rare names are, the bulk of search traffic comes from names like Liam, Olivia, Emma, and Noah. You need both — popular names for traffic, unique names for differentiation.
5. Static generation scales beautifully
With Next.js SSG, we generate 3,500+ pages at build time. Each name gets its own page, each origin gets a category page, and each style gets a browsing page. Build time is under 2 minutes.
What's Next
- 2,000 names by end of March
- FAQ schema on every category page for richer search results
- Name comparison feature for parents deciding between two names
- Pronunciation guides with audio for non-English names
Check it out at babynamepick.com and let me know what names we're missing!
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