How we sort the names in the United States
This article is about the US list. If your Little Bean is in Portugal, read how we sort the names in Portugal instead.
When you swipe on Baby Bee, the names don't show up at random. The list comes from the SSA's Baby Names from Social Security Card Applications: nearly 25,000 names, 13,902 girl names and 11,018 boy names. And every single one is in play: nothing stays hidden.
It isn't a list of allowed names
This is the difference that trips up anyone who read the Portuguese version. Portugal has an official list of what is admitted. The United States has no list at all: the SSA grants no permission, it only records what parents actually chose. Every name in the deck is there because real babies were given it, not because someone approved it. The rules that do exist are set by each state and are about something else, and we cover them here.
A name makes the list if it was given to at least 50 babies between 2016 and 2025. That's the only cut there is, and it comes from the source itself: below that the SSA doesn't publish, so that no individual child becomes identifiable.
Four tiers of popularity
Each name has an invisible tier, worked out from real birth records between 2016 and 2025. There are four, by rank within each gender: popular (the top 25), common (26th to 100th), less common (101st to 2000th), and rare (everything else, which is the vast majority).
The deck serves the most-used tiers first and keeps the rare ones for later. Within each tier the order is shuffled: it stays steady during your session, so cards don't repeat, and it comes out different next time.
Why the most-used first?
Because you react faster to familiar names: a name you've heard a thousand times gets decided in a second, one you've never seen asks for more attention. Once the obvious ones are dealt with, the rare finds start to appear, and by then you have the headspace to give them a real chance.
Nothing is left out
The tier is only an order of entry, never a filter. If you both keep swiping, you go through all 24,920 names, from the first to the last. And if your Little Bean ends up with a fourth-tier name, wonderful: it was there from the start, it just arrived at the right moment.