Static Site Generation for 1,200+ Pages: Lessons from Building a Baby Name Database

When I started building BabyNamePick , I knew I wanted every single name to have its own page. With 1,200+ names, that meant 1,200+ statically generated pages — plus category pages, letter pages, and blog posts. Here's what I learned about scaling static generation. The Numbers Our current build generates: 1,269 name pages ( /name/[slug] ) 50+ category pages ( /[category] ) 26 letter pages ( /letter/[letter] ) 85+ blog posts ( /blog/[slug] ) Total: ~3,400+ static HTML pages All from a single names.json file and a TypeScript blog module. Lesson 1: Keep Your Data Source Simple We tried a few approaches: SQLite → too much overhead for static generation Markdown files → too many files to manage JSON file → ✅ simple, fast, version-controlled // data/names.json - 1 , 269 entries [ { "name" : "Elara" , "meaning" : "Shining light" , "gender" : "girl" , "origin" : "greek" , "style" : [ "celestial" , "mythological" ], "popularity" : "rising" , "startLetter" : "E" } ] A single JSON file loads in