Customer Reviews

The Baby Name Wizard: A Magical Method for Finding the Perfect Name for Your Baby

5 star:		(90)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

My wife and I used this book yesterday to pick out our second daughter's name and had a lot of fun doing it. There are two main sections in this book. The first section gives great detail for each name including nicknames, variants, sister's and brother's names (what the author felt sounded like a nice match), style, usage timeline (a little graph that shows a period from 1900 until now and how often the name was used in that period) and a general description of the history around the name, significant facts and advice. The second half of the book categorizes names in groups like Saint's Names, 70's-80's names, Rugged Names, Place Names... The writing is funny, clever and helpful. The authors insights are keen and I felt like I shared her opinion on almost everything. Maybe everyone will, maybe that's just me.

One of the things that stood out for us when searching for a name were the suggestions for brother and sister names. We already have a daughter Alaina (Laney) and we're planning to name our future son Rowan. We were talking about how we like the name Jacey and when we looked it up, the suggestions for a sister's name included Laney and the brother's group included Rowan. It was a strange coincidence and it was enough for us to finalize our decision! We were also playing around with the name Kiera (KEE-rah) and found that the suggestions for brother and sister names also included other ones we liked.

This is a really nice informative book, fun to read and has a nice volume of names at 50,000 plus.

This book is a jewel of a find. It's not exhaustive lists of names that make you cross-eyed after 5 minutes. I hated going through other baby name books. This one gives a graph of the name's evolving popularity over time, classifies the name in groupings, gives suggestions of brother and sister names for baby etc. It has much more features that you'll have to read. My husband and I named our second child from the suggestions for, say example, Mia. There were names that sound like they belong to the same family like Zoe, Lilly, Ava etc. And if you like lists, there's that too!

Okay, so there are a MILLION baby name books out there. I went with this one because I thought it might give cool first/middle name combos or something. But really, it just gave a somewhat limited list of names along with their current popularity status and historical usage via graph. Then the book shows this list recycled by name-type categories (like "Timeless", or "Guys and Dolls", or "Greek"). So the variety i was hoping for wasn't really there. That was kind of dissapointing. On the up side, this book showed me that a name is not unique just because it comes into my mind during an "ah-HA" moment-a lot of names are being used to death due to this kind of thinking. Just look at Madison or Chase! So I did obtain a guideline of what not to name my baby unless I want him/her to be one of 6 kids with the same name in his/her kindergarten class. I found that to be useful information. If you are looking to make sure you don't choose something over-used, OR if you are trying to pick something overused so your kid can blame their credit on the other 6.19 million Brittany's, this really will help you make a great pick. But if you are looking for varied name ideas, you might want to go for one of those 75,000+ BABY NAMES books out there. Just my two cents.

I bought this book this weekend to search for names for our second child. I find the book very easy to read and navigate. I really like the charts and it is very interesting to look up the "brother-sister" naming part. Even though I didn't always like what it suggested, the names I did like I could then go back and look up other brother/sister names, so you are continually getting ideas. This is a great book, but my one complaint would be, that it offers so many brother/sister combinations it would have been great to have a section on pairing middle names. Just a thought, but other than that, if you are looking for more than just list after list of names, this is a great book.

I just purchased this book about a week ago for my sister who is going to have a new baby anyday now and she just loved it. Ive bought her baby name books in the past but this one is the best she says. It contains everything you can imagine and has history of the name and what the name means. Its unique among all other baby name books. Its the perfect gift for the expecting new mother. Highly Recomended. Enjoy.

This book is wonderful. It is entertaining, insightful, and a lot of fun to read. Anyone who picks it up at my house is instantly hooked. It really is hard to put down. I have three children and have been through numerous baby name books and this is by far the best and only one you need.

I love this book. So many baby books are just unending lists of names and "meanings." This book offers a huge variety of names with a short paragraph for each that talks about popularity trends, nicknames, usage in pop culture, etc. The author's comments are interesting, entertaining, and most importantly they absolutely ring true. My favorite part is the list of sibling names for each name. It is fascinating. It seemed like all of our favorite names showed up on each other's sibling name list. I also loved the groupings of names into style families. The book is informative and fun to read. I highly recommend it.

The publisher took full advantage of the "look inside" feature on Amazon. Being able to see the index is very helpful so you can see just how extensive the list of names is and you will know which names have the detailed "profile" (the ones in bold in the index).

This is by far the best baby name book I have ever seen!

There are tons of baby name books out there, but this one is really the best I've seen. It's not just a list of names, but a full, engaging study of all you think about when naming your child. I just used it to find a name for our second and couldn't be happier. It will definitely be on my list of great baby shower gifts from now on!

This is the most fantastic baby-name book I've ever read. And I've read it purely for FUN. The truth is, my husband and I have our minds made up about Baby #3's name (or, at least, we've narrowed the selection down considerably), and STILL, I can't put Laura's book down. (I've also spent way too many hours perusing her archived blogs online.)

So why am I reading a baby-name book/blog when nothing will change my mind about our baby's name anyway?

Because Laura's writing is superb, her insights are astounding, and her ability to present to us in laymen terms the statistics and history of names is fascinating. I've never seen anyone pack so much history (cultural and political) into something as "simple" as baby names!

I will continue to recommend and read Laura's work long after I'm out of the market for new baby names. I've even gotten my mom hooked on Laura's baby-name/historical insights....and Mom is pushing 60! My point: this book should be interesting to anyone who's interested in the ebb and flow of trends through history.

Sarah Smiley

Wattenberg definitely gives practical tips for what you want to avoid or look for when naming your child. I especially found the popularity numbers and frequency graphs to be useful, as we were trying not to go too trendy or popular with our next child's name. She gives a great snapshot of lots of names, but purposely leaves out some that are extremely similar to others. The style categories make lots of sense and give a vast array of names you may never have heard of. All in all, this is a wonderful resource for "why" we name what we do, and what works and what doesn't. We still can't decide on a name, but that's not Wattenberg's fault! Great book!