If you’ve ever pondered the perfect name for your future child or looked up the meaning of your own moniker, you’ve likely come across BabyNames.com.

As its name gives away, this is a website dedicated entirely to baby names – inspiration, ideas, stats on the post popular names, and the meaning of whichever you choose.

But those heading over to do their usual baby name search this week will have been presented with one of two surprises: either a powerful statement in support of the Black community or an error message, as the website appears to have crashed following their display of solidarity.

Let’s talk through the initial statement first, which appeared on the BabyNames.com website last week.

Those heading to the website saw a message right at the top of the homepage, reading: ‘Each one of these names was somebody’s baby’.

What followed was a list of more than 100 Black people killed by US police officers or civilians. At the bottom of this list, another message: ‘BabyNames.com stands in solidarity with the Black community. #blacklivesmatter’.

Over on Twitter, the BabyNames.com account has dedicated itself to tweeting out each new name of a Black person killed by police added to the website, along with the #BlackLivesMatter tag.

The site’s actions have been roundly praised on social media, with one tweet, which has so far received more than 182,000 retweets, reading: ‘ok baby names dot com go off’.

BabyNames.com founder Jennifer Moss told HuffPost: ‘I saw the names listed on NPR, and they broke my heart. I knew then I wanted to include them in our company’s statement. I am a parent, and it just came from my heart.’

But since the statement was posted and praise poured in, we haven’t been able to access the BabyNames.com website since last night, receiving an error message that says: ‘Hosting Server Read Timeout’.

We’ve reached out to BabyNames.com to find out why the site has crashed, and will update this article if we hear back.

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