Building a Multilingual Baby Name Database: Lessons from 40+ Origins and 1,500 Names

I've been building BabyNamePick.com — a baby name database that now covers 1,500+ names from over 40 cultural origins. Here's what I learned about data modeling, cultural sensitivity, and scaling a name database. The Data Model Each name entry looks like this: { "name" : "Saoirse" , "meaning" : "Freedom" , "origin" : "irish" , "gender" : "girl" , "styles" : [ "strong" , "cultural" ] } Simple, but the decisions behind each field were not. Origin: One String, Many Debates Names don't respect borders. Is "Jasmine" Persian, Arabic, or English? We went with the earliest traceable origin (Persian), but added style tags to capture cross-cultural usage. Some origin categories we use: Geographic: japanese , korean , irish , welsh Cultural: biblical , native-american , polynesian Language-family: slavic , nordic The key insight: origin is about etymology, styles are about usage . A name can be Irish in origin but popular in America. Gender: Beyond Binary We use four values: boy , girl , unisex ,