This book is my favorite gift for moms-to-be! What do you need in a baby name book? Sure, meanings can be fun and country of origin can help weed out certain things, but what we were most interested in was what connotations certain names bring to people.
How popular is it? — This book has charts showing the popularity of a name over the last 100 years.
What other names resemble it? — This book groups the names by era, sound group and other associations. (What other book has groups like “Surfer Sixties” or “Timeless”?)
What names will fit in with the other names in your family? — This book has “brother names” for each name. This was a great starting point for our baby name search. Often I liked a name, but my husband didn’t, so he would look at the names of the siblings and eventually we found names, for the three boys, that we both love.
What nicknames are common for this name? – This book suggests the good and the bad that can come from labeling your baby with a particular name. Helpful tip: take a hard look at her son before you load him up with a name she can never live up to.
As a writer, I also use this book to come up with name ideas for my characters, especially when writing about a different time than the current one. When was a name most popular? When did a certain name come into use? It just makes my stories ring a little truer.