Name Voyage

What led me to build a nationality estimator

I’ve always been fascinated by the stories our names carry. In South Africa, hearing someone’s surname can often hint at their heritage, but with migration, intermarriage and globalisation those hints can be wildly misleading. During my Harvard computer science programme we were tasked with building a project that consumed real‑world APIs. Most of my classmates gravitated towards weather dashboards or stock tickers; I found myself drawn to names. Could I build a tool that used data rather than gut feeling to estimate someone’s nationality?

That curiosity became Name Voyage, a minimalist web app that takes a first, second or both names, calls an API to fetch nationality probabilities based on global census records, and displays the results alongside country flags. It’s not meant to pigeonhole anyone – far from it. Names travel with us, and that’s precisely what makes the results interesting.

From speculation to probability

We all have anecdotal stories about names. When I first met a colleague named “Aisha” I wrongly assumed she was from North Africa; she turned out to be Malaysian. With Name Voyage I wanted to replace that subjective guesswork with transparent data. Here’s how it works:

1. Enter a first name. The landing page is a deep blue canvas with a golden “Name Voyage” heading and a single input field that invites you to “Enter a name”.
2. Click Submit. Two large yellow buttons – Submit and Clear – control the interaction. No registration or cookies are required.
3. See the results. Within seconds the app lists the most likely countries, their ISO codes, and the probability of the name originating there. The total number of records used for the calculation is shown just below the buttons. For the name “Alexander” the API returned 154 892 records with the highest probabilities belonging to the United States (14.48%), Trinidad & Tobago (4.38%), New Zealand (3.09%), Guatemala (2.85%) and Australia (2.71%), at the time of writing this article. Each entry is accompanied by its national flag, courtesy of the Flags API.

Because the app surfaces both the probabilities and the underlying record count, you can quickly gauge how common a name is and how evenly it’s distributed across countries. Names like “Sahil” or “Lwazi” yield more concentrated results, while globally popular names like “Maria” show a broader spread. There’s a Clear button if you want to start over.

A few observations and caveats

What surprised me most when building Name Voyage wasn’t the code but the cultural nuances it revealed. Seeing the Trinidadian flag pop up for “Alexander” reminded me of the Scottish and Caribbean migrations that carried names across oceans. When I tried my own surname the results were skewed towards nations I’d never visited, underscoring how names and identities intersect in unexpected ways.

It’s important to stress that Name Voyage does not define anyone’s identity. It draws on census data to compute probabilities, so rare or modern names may return less accurate or less diverse results. I included a conspicuous record count to make this transparent; if there are only a handful of entries the probabilities should be taken with a large pinch of salt.

Why keep it so simple?

The design of Name Voyage is intentionally spartan. I am, however, planning on a makeover for the application. There are no ads, no analytics scripts and no hidden dark patterns. I wanted to create a respectful space where users could explore the data without feeling surveilled.

This project taught me that small, focused tools can spark curiosity and conversations. Friends have used Name Voyage to test the origin of their children’s names or to explore how their family names have travelled across continents. Some have used it in classrooms to discuss migration and identity. The questions that follow are often more interesting than the answers: “Why is my Italian name popular in Brazil?” or “How did this Yoruba name end up in the Caribbean?”

I think of Name Voyage as an application that informs us, and allows us to celebrate the journeys our names have taken and the world’s wonderfully tangled tapestry. It’s a reminder that our identities are shaped by both heritage and personal stories – and sometimes, by a simple curiosity project built for a Harvard class.