Customer Reviews

Very Best Baby Name Book

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

As I have bought the earlier and thinner edition of this book I am amazed at how much better this edition is.This book gives you the rules for naming your baby.Yes,there are rules for naming baby's.Dont want your baby being the local idiot just because you dont know how to pick out a name.

This book will give you guidelines on what to do and what NOT to do.This book will show you how some names have become less popular almost non existant over the decades.

This book is all about giving your baby its own identity and personality,and why.Covers the most important factors when deciding a name for your baby.This book tells you what you need to know.Even has several pages of famous names and their REAL names.

The only thing I dont like about this edition is the poor quality of paper it was printed on.Very poor quality.Thats the only thing wrong with this book.

I recommend these baby names books too:
1)"Whats wrong with every name in the book:dont name your baby".By David Narter.
2)"The new age baby name book".By Sue Browder.

I write short stories and my husband is a novelist, so we are always on the lookout for good names for our characters. If we see a good name in a newspaper or meet someone who has a good name, we write it down. For example, I just met a car salesman named Donovan Smith. What a cool name, so it's in my handy, dandy, little notebook. However, we write a lot and we're not going to find all the names we need that way. Besides, we don't want to get sued, so generally we make them up and for help doing that we turn to three reference books, books that will make the life of any writer of fiction a tiny bit easier.

I suppose every writer knows about Sherrilyn Kenyon's CHARACTER NAMING SOURCEBOOK. Ms. Kenyon's book starts out with a short chapter on the craft of naming, then she goes right into the name lists, giving her readers lists of all kinds of names from Anglo-Saxon to Welsh with thirty-three others thrown in in between, like Armenian, Celtic, Danish, Dutch and plenty more. She gives us both male and female names and their meanings and that's handy for giving good guys and bad guys names, because you can give your villains dark sounding mysterious names. This book is a must for writers. I really believe that.

Basil Cottle's DICTIONARY OF SURNAMES is also an excellent resource for finding names that we turn to a lot. Where else would you find surnames like Icemonger, Inger or Iorwerth. Great names here. However, I should say that there are only names here that have originated in the British Isles. There are a whole lot of them though, along with an excellent introduction of surnames and how they came to be. Mr. Cottle also gives us a brief history and meaning of every name. This book, like the one I mentioned above, is also a must for fiction writer.

And lastly there is THE VERY BEST BABY NAME BOOK, by Bruce Lansky, which we also turn to a lot. I may seem silly, at first, for a serious writer to include this book along with the first two books, but babies grow up and they keep their names. And there are 30,001 names in this book, names from everywhere in the world along with a few facts about many of the names. My husband the novelist actually uses this book more than the others. If you write a lot, then you should have this book too.

If you have all three of these books in your writer's arsenal, then you'll never need to look any further for a name, though good names often turn up in the most unlikely of places, so I'd keep that handy, dandy, little notebook if I were you.

All three books reviewed in one review by Vesta Irene

This is the only book I bought when I was pregnant with my daughter and the only one I am using now to find a name for baby #2. This is a great book if you enjoy searching through names and their variations. I wanted to see as many realistic names as possible and I knew I wanted an uncommon, but not weird, name. It also lists the ethnicity of the name and its variations. My only complaint (and I have an old version of the book, so this may have changed) is that the book does not lay out the pronunciation of the names. Overall, I love this book and searching through it.

I have to admit to being upset by the claim that this book is a knockoff of 50,001 Best Baby Names (and the piddly single star rating as a result), given that the first edition of Lansky's book was published in 1979, and the first edition of 50,001 in 2005. My 1984 edition does include multiple lists of the type to which MOM is referring.

I was astonished when I saw the updated copy of this book -- my skinny 1984 ed. has only 13,001 names! When I flipped through the newest edition in search of the obscure names I tend to like (like another reviewer's husband, I am a writer), I was thrilled to find most of them, in addition to more common names.

I also own Sherrilyn Kenyon's Character Naming book, and I have to say that the new version of The Very Best Baby Name Book may have it beat. My biggest complaint about Kenyon's book is that while it includes Hebrew and even a (very) few Sanskrit names, it is almost completely devoid of any Asian-based names (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, among others). Lansky includes lists of popular names from around the world -- from Canada to Russia to China to Kenya. Though Kenyon's book does categorize names based on nationality, it can be a little mind-numbing to page through the same names in nationality after nationality, so it's nice to have another reference with the more traditional alphabetical approach (and nationality of origin is included for each name).

I have also used websites that contain databases of thousands of names, and I adamantly believe that buying a book like Lansky's is *well* worth the money. Online databases, while useful, are riddled with advertisements and popups; typically the list of names fills only a tenth of the page, leaving you paging through short list after short list and spending as much time clicking and scrolling as you do reading names. Lansky's book is a compilation of lots of sites of this sort, and a must-have for any writer's (or future parent's!) shelf.

Lansky has written many baby name books and this one is really interesting. It is not as good as 35,000+ Baby Names or Baby Names Around the World both also by Lansky, but a very interesting book. I am addicted to baby name books and I recommend this one.

The market for baby name books must indeed be cut-throat. I mean, they're either THE VERY BEST BABY NAME BOOK (as claimed here) or THE ONLY BABY NAME BOOK YOU'll EVER NEED, or THE LAST WORD ON FIRST NAMES! Yikes! How daunting for those prospective parents who feel the need for such a guide. (I don't know how my own parents named EIGHT kids without ever purchasing such a book, but back then, I guess, people trusted their own instincts and sense of good taste).

Of course, back in the 50s and 60s, there were naming trends but not this near frenzy to be unique and original (but not so original as to be downright WEIRD), so the pressure wasn't so great. Nowadays, you gotta give the kid the right name, get him/her in the right pre-school and modern dance class and into a college prep program by age four or their lives will be ruined (and it'll be ALL your fault).

Bruce Lansky is nothing if not comprehensive, so for those seeking variety in naming, there will certainly be an abundance here. Of course, one of the book's selling points is the sheer number of names offered, but Lansky knows and you know that 99% are things most parents would NEVER even consider. It's nice to see what the most popular names in Bulgaria are, but most of them really won't fly at that trendy pre-school after all.

A look at the '91 edition (back when it was simply THE *BEST* BABY NAME BOOK (IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD) is instructive. Back the first name listed in the girls' section was (as you might guess) "Abbey, Abby." This time out, you have such exotica as 'Aolani and 'Aulani preceding (taking precedence, I guess, because there is an apostrophe BEFORE the actual "A"). Then you get the letter "A" by itself, followed by "Aaleyah" and "Aaliah" (listed as separate names, which certainly boosts the count). And you get "Aaron": I guess because somebody somewhere once named their baby girl "Aaron" (when they were going for "Erin" maybe?). You get the picture. Oddly enough "Abbey" and "Abby" are still given only one listing, and this time out are even joined by "Abbie." But now "Abagail," "Abbagail," "Abbigail," "Abbygail," and "Abegail" have all joined the pack--as separate listings. Hmmm. By the time you reach the more standard (and currently very popular) "Abigail," your head will be spinning. If it is, and you're thinking of naming your baby girl Abigail, take my advice: stick to the classic form and spelling. Your daughter will thank you.

Lansky and crew justify the separate listings by saying that they are mainly using spelling as their criterion for a name. There is an argument for that, of course. But separate listings for "Ann" and "Anne" seem unnecessary at best (and such was not the case in the earlier edition). Interestingly, Lansky seems to justifying separating out the "e" spelling of that name because (he claims) it can be used for boys. That will likely prove a headscratcher for most Americans, especially since many would consider the added "e" to be a more distinctly feminine way of spelling this very common GIRL'S name (no matter how you spell it, slice it or dice it). Yes, there are some European countries where that name (pronounced differently, by the by) MIGHT be used for boys. But even there, it's likely to be hens' teeth rare.

Of course, the increasing genderlessness of many given names is an established trend, and Lansky is right to note it. Names are even coded here, so that the reader can see whether the name is considered mainly masculine, mainly feminine, or truly unisex. This is mainly due to actual birth certificate namings, however, so the genderlessness of many nicknames is only touched upon. I have known almost an equal number of males and females who go by "Lee" for instance, but for about half of them (of either sex), it's actually a nickname. If you factor in alternate spellings like "Lea" (often pronounced as one syllable) and "Leigh," it's difficult to determine whether the name really is mainly masculine these days or not.

Lansky is by no means the scholar that someone like Leslie Dunkling is, and many have picked up on a few of the etymological confusions and downright errors in the various editions of his books. I actually don't think that's as severe a problem as all that myself. When name origins are in some dispute, or if, as I often maintain, they really DO have more than one source, he does try to give them all. The brevity of the entries, however, can make for considerable confusion. He actually gives three potential sources for the name "Gladys" (all that research for a name virtually NO ONE's going to use). The Latin root suggests "small sword," while in Irish, it means "princess," and the Welsh source suggests a link to the Latin "Claudia" (which means "lame"). A more scholarly text might have suggested the most likely source (unless it really IS derived from all those sources at different times and all kind of blended together. Possible certainly). But I like the fact that Lansky does not pretend he has the ultimate etymology for all these thousands of name. Many really are lost in the mists of time: and of course, these days, many are just made up and there's no need to force a meaning onto names given simply because someone liked how they sounded.

Which is also a big part of it, is it not? In fact, maybe Lansky's relatively strong emphasis on etymology could be viewed as misguided. Other guides are more prescriptive about what you definitely should and should NOT name your newborn. Lansky's got a good deal of that info too, but you have to consult lists at the beginning of the book. And even then, they're not all that inclusive. But then, people really should have some common sense on these matters. We all know what the "nerdy" names are. If you insist on naming your kid "Egbert" anyway, you deserve his lasting contempt.

If Lansky's book is truly the VERY BEST, it's still not perfect. But it's fun, and probably of some very real use to the naming challenged. It probably could have used a few less of the gimmicky lists (how many people are really going to name their kid after a cartoon character anyway?) and a few more practical guides (believe it or not, people often need pronunciation guides, Bruce!). Otherwise you might get little girls named Siobhan running around pronouncing it "See-O-Ban")

Bought this book when I was pregnant with my first in 1997 and since then have had over 5 friends borrow it and loved it. Now I'm expecting again and using it yet again. The best part of this book is that it not only displays generic names but many variations of the name including spellings and still has the every popular "trendy" names. The beginning section is not only entertaining it's informational and really does make you think before you name. If you ever get the chance to browse through it, do it.

This name book isn't necessarily top of the line, but it's not a bad book either. I found several names that I thought would suit my tastes. As a first time parent, I'm exploring all options and approaching it very carefully so that when it's time to deliver (11/03/06 is the due date) I'll have a name ready and I think this book is more than helpful in the process.

There are sections in the book that cover gender neutral names, 100 most popular boy and 100 most popular girl names in the U.S., popular names worldwide, legal issues (like filing birth certificates if your child is born outside of a hospital), birthstones & flowers, fascinating facts about names, and what some celebrities are naming their kids in addition to the listing, origins, and definitions for over 30,000 names. The definitions aren't totally accurate, but a little research will probably take care of that. I guess for $8.00 you can only ask for so much. To get more depth and insight, you'll probably have to pony up more cash, but The Very Best Baby Name Book In The Whole Wide World is quite capable of fufilling its purpose. It's definitely worth looking into.

We used the old version of this book 16 years ago. My cousin, is now going to have a baby and I was so glad to be able to find the same book in print and even better. It is a wonderful book and lots of fun to share with "Dad" and anyone else special on your list! Allow yourself enough time because there are plenty of names to keep you searching. Have fun.

Picking a baby name is a very personal process and everyone approaches it differently. We were given four or five baby name books, and this was the one we found most complete and helpful.

I suggest getting several books, including this one, and just enjoy looking through them and getting ideas. Don't worry too much about what a name "means", it varies from book to book and country to country, and no one will know it anyway.

And don't worry if your name is or isn't on a "Top 10" list. The only list that matters is your baby's!