Privacy

This page lists everything the site holds about you, in plain English. It is generated from the database itself, so it cannot quietly fall out of date.

babynames.io is a free baby-name site. Most of it can be used without telling us anything at all — you can search, browse every name page and read every meaning without an account, a cookie banner or an email address.

Some things have to remember something: a shortlist needs to know which names you kept, and a list shared with your partner needs to know which of you kept what. Everything below is that.

The Short Version

We do not sell your information, and there is no advertising on this site. We use Google Analytics to count visits.
An email address given to sign in is not permission to market to you. Those are separate, and we ask separately.
On a couple list, your partner never sees what you passed on. That is enforced in the code that builds the page, not left to the page.
You can have all of it deleted by asking at [email protected].

What We Hold, and Why

Names You Save, and Lists You Share

What: The names you keep, which tool you kept them in, and — on a shared list — a display name for each person and the email address used to send their invite. Notes you write on a name are stored as you type them. If you have an account, a link between it and the list. For an invite sent by email we also keep what our mail provider told us happened to it: whether it was delivered, bounced or failed, and any reason they gave.
Why: So your list is there when you come back, and so a shared list can tell one person's votes from another's. Without a name against a vote, "who chose what" cannot be answered at all. The link to an account is what lets a list follow you to another device. The delivery result is so the person who sent an invite can see that it never arrived, rather than assuming they were ignored — we do not record whether an invite was opened or clicked.
Our Reason: Necessary to provide a feature you asked for.
Kept For: Until you delete the list, or two years after the last time it was opened.; Invite links are stored only as a one-way hash, so an invite cannot be recovered from our database — only re-sent. Deleting your account does not delete a list you share with someone else: they are still using it, and did not ask for it to go.

The Newsletter, If You Ask for It

What: Your email address, which page you signed up on, and — as evidence that you did — the IP address and browser you confirmed from. A record of which weekly emails were sent to you.
Why: To send you the weekly email you asked for, and to be able to show that you asked for it. The record of what was sent is what stops you being emailed the same thing twice.
Our Reason: Your consent, given by clicking the confirmation link. Nothing is ever sent before that click.
Kept For: Until you unsubscribe, then thirty days. An address that never confirms is deleted after thirty days.; Every email has a one-click unsubscribe that takes effect immediately. If your provider tells us an address is bad, or you report an email as spam, that address is suppressed and never emailed again — including if it is later typed into the signup form.

What You Kept and Passed On

What: Each keep, pass, thumbs-up and thumbs-down, against a random key for your browser or your place on a shared list — not against your name. If you use the final round, which of two names you chose each time you were asked.
Why: So the deck never shows you the same name twice, and so suggestions improve. Passes matter as much as keeps: without them we would keep offering names you have already rejected.
Our Reason: Necessary to provide the feature, and our legitimate interest in improving it.
Kept For: Two years from the last activity on the list it belongs to.; On a couple list an individual pass is never shown to the other person. That is enforced in the query that builds the page, not in the page itself. Your final-round answers produce your own order, which is shown to you alongside the combined one.

What You Type Into the Generator

What: The filters you choose, and — where you enter them — a surname, siblings' names and parents' names. These are the names of real people in your family.
Why: They are what the tool works from: a surname is needed to check how a name sounds beside it, siblings to judge whether a name fits the set. Keeping the query lets us tell which rules actually help.
Our Reason: Necessary to produce the result you asked for. Any use beyond that is on the consent recorded with the row.
Kept For: Two years, or until you ask us to remove it.; Every row carries the consent it was collected under, and an export can strip the family names entirely. Rows collected for one purpose are not moved to another.

Your Account

What: An email address, a name if you give one, which tier your account is on, and which of the optional emails you have asked for. A password only if you choose to set one — signing in by emailed link never creates one you have to remember. We also record when you last signed in, and hold a new address temporarily while you confirm a change. Staff accounts additionally hold an encrypted two-factor secret and recovery codes; ordinary accounts never do, and are never asked for a second factor.
Why: So your lists follow you to another device, and so we can email you when something happens on a list you are on.
Our Reason: Necessary to provide the account you asked for.
Kept For: Until you delete the account.; Giving us an email address to sign in does not give us permission to market to you. Those are separate choices, and the second one is never assumed. The switches stored here cover mail about your own account; whether you get the newsletter is recorded separately, on the newsletter list itself, so that unsubscribing there is the only answer that matters. The last-sign-in time is there so you can spot somebody else using your account, and a pending address change is deleted the moment it is confirmed or cancelled.

What You Did on the Site

What: A record of things you did that tell us whether the site worked: a search and how many results it returned, whether you clicked one of them, whether you searched again. Against a code that stands for your browser FOR ONE DAY \u2014 not your name, and not your IP address. If you are signed in, it is linked to your account.
Why: So we can tell a search that worked from one that returned twenty useless names. A count of searches alone cannot: \u201cnothing found\u201d is only the most obvious failure, and without knowing whether anyone clicked a result we cannot see the others.
Our Reason: Our legitimate interest in knowing whether our own tools work. Nothing here is used to advertise to you or shared with anybody.
Kept For: The words you typed into the search box are removed after 90 days; the rest of the record goes after two years.; There is NO COOKIE for this, and we deliberately do not fingerprint your device. The code is made by scrambling together the day\u2019s secret, your address and your browser\u2019s description \u2014 and the day\u2019s secret is destroyed after 48 hours, so once it is gone nobody can work out that code again, us included. That is what stops it being a way of following you from one day to the next: come back tomorrow and you are somebody new to us. Automated traffic is flagged rather than deleted, so our own numbers stay honest.

Whether You Used a Name

What: If we ask whether you went with a name and you answer: your answer, and the name if you told us one. If you changed your mind later, both answers are kept so the change is visible rather than the old one being erased.
Why: It is the only way to know whether the site actually helped, rather than only that it was used. Everything else we hold measures activity; this measures the result.
Our Reason: Your answer is entirely voluntary. We ask once and never again, and "rather not say" is a full answer that stops the question for good.
Kept For: Two years from the last activity on the list it belongs to, the same as the list itself.; We never ask for a date of birth. Which tool the name came from, whether it was a mutual match and which country you were browsing are read from records we already hold rather than asked for.

What You Post in the Community

What: Everything you write in the community: the threads you start, the replies you post, which names a thread is about, the posts you react to, the threads you follow so we can tell you about a reply, and how you voted in a thread's poll.
Why: Because a discussion cannot exist without it. A thread has to know who wrote it to show your name against it and to let you edit it, and a follow has to know who to notify.
Our Reason: Necessary to provide a feature you asked for by posting.
Kept For: For as long as the thread exists.; THIS IS THE ONE PART OF THE SITE THAT IS PUBLIC. A thread, a reply and a poll result can be read by anyone, signed in or not, and may be found by a search engine. Your reactions and the threads you follow are not shown to anyone else. Deleting your account does not remove what you posted. A discussion other people took part in stays where it is; your name comes off it and it reads as written by a deleted member.

Reports and Moderation

What: If you report a post: which post, the reason you picked, anything you added, and whether it has been dealt with. If we restrict your account: what the restriction is, why, when it lifts, and whether it was lifted early.
Why: So a report reaches a person who can act on it, and so a restriction can be applied consistently and explained if you ask.
Our Reason: Our legitimate interest in a community that is safe to read, which we consider outweighs the limited record kept.
Kept For: A report, one year after it is dealt with. A restriction, for as long as it runs and one year after.; A report is never shown to the person reported, and we never tell them who reported them — a report you can be identified for is one nobody makes. A copy of your data includes reports YOU made, never reports about you. Who dealt with it is our own record rather than yours, and is left out of your copy.

Asking Us for Your Data, or to Delete It

What: A record of each time you ask for a copy of your data or ask us to delete your account: which you asked for, when, and when it was finished.
Why: Because we have to be able to show that we did it. A deletion nobody can prove happened is no better than one that never did.
Our Reason: A legal obligation. We are required both to honour these requests and to keep evidence that we honoured them.
Kept For: Six years after the request is completed. This is the one record that deliberately outlives your account — after a deletion it holds your email address and nothing else about you, because otherwise there would be no proof the deletion happened.; A deletion is reversible for 30 days by signing back in; after that it runs and cannot be undone. A copy of your data is built as a file, kept privately for seven days behind a link that only works for you, and then destroyed.

Messages You Send Us

What: What you write in the contact form, a name and email address if you give them, and the page you were on. We keep our replies alongside it so the conversation stays together.
Why: So a message can be read and answered by a person, and so we can tell whether we ever got back to you.
Our Reason: Necessary to answer a message you chose to send.
Kept For: Two years after the conversation ends.; Your email address is optional — leave it out and we simply cannot reply. Your IP address is stored only as a one-way hash, which is enough to spot a flood of spam and is not a record of where you are.

Technical Records

What: A session record with your IP address and browser identification, as with essentially any website. And, for each email we send you, whether it arrived — with your address stored only as the part after the @ and a one-way hash, never as an address we can read back.
Why: To keep you signed in and to stop forged requests being made in your name. The delivery record is how we find out that your sign-in link never reached you, which is otherwise invisible to us and impossible for you to tell us about.
Our Reason: Necessary for the site to work securely.
Kept For: Sessions are cleared when they expire. Delivery records are kept for ninety days.; Your account settings list every device you are signed in on, and let you sign out of all of them except the one you are using.

The Names You Type Into the Generator

This one is worth saying twice, because it is the only place we ask about other people. If you enter a surname, a sibling's name or a parent's name, those are the names of real people in your family, and we store them so the tool can do its job — a surname is how we check that a name does not rhyme with it, siblings are how we judge whether a name fits the set.

Every one of those records carries the reason it was collected. When we look at the data in aggregate — which naming rules actually help, which suggestions get rejected — the family names are stripped out first. They are not shared with anyone outside babynames.io.

Sharing a List With Other People

A shared list gives each person their own private link. Anyone holding that link votes as that person, so it should only go to them. When you invite someone by email, we send them one message about the list and nothing else.

There are two kinds of shared list, and the difference is stated on screen before anyone votes. On a couple list, only names you both kept are ever shown, and neither of you can see the other's passes. On a friends and family list, every vote is shown against the name of the person who cast it, which is the point of asking them. A list can be made more private later but never less, because people voted under the promise shown at the time.

Who Else Sees It

The services that run the site: our hosting provider; Resend, which delivers our email; and Google Analytics, which tells us how many people visit and which pages they read.

Google Analytics records the pages you view, the site that sent you, your device and browser, and a rough location worked out from your IP address, which it does not keep. It sets cookies so a returning visit is not counted as a new person; they are listed on Cookies. You can switch it off with Google's opt-out add-on and every part of the site keeps working. We do not use advertising networks.

Children

This site is for adults choosing names. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect anything from anyone under 16.

Your Rights

Whoever and wherever you are, you can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, or tell us to stop holding it. Email [email protected] and we will deal with it within one month. We do not make you prove a legal right first.

Because most of the site works without an account, the fastest route is often the simplest: deleting a shared list removes it and everything on it, and clearing your cookies detaches this browser from any anonymous list it was holding.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled it, tell us and we will look at it again. You can also take it to the data protection authority for your own country, wherever that is.

Changes

If we start collecting something new, it appears on this page, because this page is generated from the database rather than written separately from it.

Last updated 15 September 2026. See also Cookies and Terms.