Happy 3rd Birthday to Nameberry!

You know you’ve been around a while when you forget your birthday.  The third anniversary of Nameberry’s launch, earlier in October, came and went without any of us realizing it.  But now that we have, we want to pause and take stock of how far we’ve come with the help of all you wonderful berries over the past three years:

Number of visitors: Nearly 12 million

Number of page views: Almost 90 million

Number of countries populated by berries: All of them.  Even you, Chad!

Most-read blog: Baby Names 2011: The Hottest Trends, with nearly a million readers.

Highest traffic day ever: July 27, 2011, when we named Pippa the hottest name of 2011.

Our favorite blogs: Probably the two most personal ones, in which we each explain the origins of our name obsessions: Confessions of a Secret Name Nerd and  Call me Laila…no, Ruth…no Linda: The story of how I got hooked on names.

Most popular girls’ name:  Charlotte

Most popular boys’ name:  Finn (Yes, ahead of Henry)

Most popular unisex name: Harper

Most divisive subject on Nameberry: Unisex names

Most confusing element of our own name: Is it Nameberry or nameberry?  We can never decide.

Other names we considered for the site: Denamer, Namesifter, Nameniks and Rumpelstiltskinner, along with approximately 819 other ideas, though now we can’t imagine it being anything but Nameberry.  Except maybe nameberry.

Most popular list: Nicknames for Girls.  For reasons known only to Google.

Most popular guest blog: Style Updates for the Boys’ Top 100, by Elisabeth Wilborn.

Most frequent guest blogger: Abby Sandel of Appellation Mountain, who writes our weekly name news column.

Site that’s sent the most readers our way: Ohdeedoh, followed by The Daily Beast.

Search term that brings the most visitors to Nameberry: Nameberry!  Second place goes to “nicknames for girls.”

Weird search terms that have brought some people to Nameberry: Aggressive male human names, ancient aquarius nicknames, and “Are names Alice and Elias too similar?”  The answer to that, by the way, is yes.

Our hopes for the year ahead: Love, peace, and happiness for all our wonderful berries.  And that next year at this time, there are twice as many of you! xxx