I just love this book! Even though I am done having kids (I hope), I can not bring myself to part with this book. Even when my cousin was having a hard time coming up with a name for her second daughter, I could not offer up this book! It is very special. It is where I found the amazing name for my son, Cassius. When I was very pregnant, I saw the name Cassius in this book and made a mental note. So when I went into labor, my husband and I were driving to the hospital, still trying to come up with a name for our second son. I told my husband I wanted to try to incorporate the name of my favorite singer, Johnny Cash. So he said, "What about Cashman?". Then I remembered reading about Cassius, and how the book said the name was exotic, yet traditional, and most importantly, rarely used! So I said "How about Cassius?" And the rest as they say, is history!

I've been inexplicably facisnated by names for as long as I can remember. I used to fantasize about having ten children just so I could name them all.

When I learned a baby is coming into my life, I've chose to indulge my love of baby name books. I was particularly intrigued by this one. Watten claims to have developed a pseudo-scientific method for helping the reader identifying the perfect name for their child.

Her "formula" is a combination objective data like the frequency of a names use over the last hundred years, first letters and number of syllables with subjective things like social perceptions.
She blattantly admits that the book is based on U.S. trends and statistics. My favourite feature of the book, is how each entry has a list of possible sibling names. What I really disliked was her need to include her opinion of each and every name. Does a parent who has their heart set on "Lucille" care that Watterberg deems it a name "whose day has passed"?

This book is amazing. I bought two copies, one for me to flip through and one for my husband to use. We wouldn't have been able to name out son without this book.

This book has a few different layouts. Of course, there are ranks by popularity but then it also breaks the names down by origins.

A baby name book is a baby name book, right? Wrong. This book is witty and enjoyable to read (and/or browse through). Has some great features such as the "siblings" lists. Each name gives some suggested names for siblings if you're on your 2nd or more. There are also lists of unconventional names, lists of biblical names, old English names and many, many more. The lists are helpful if you decide you love the name Opal but your partner says it is a horrible name. Find the list containing Opal and see several other names that are similar in their "feel." So much research was done for this book including alternate spellings, popularity over the years, and meanings of names. It is the best name book I've found. It is also a fun book to bring out at a dull party and read the witty remarks about your guests names that Wattenberg has devised.

This is a great resource for brainstorming baby names, and helped us pick two! The "popularity" index, in graph format for each name, is particularly nice. We did find that some names we wanted to know about were not in the book, but this was infrequent.

Not only are my husband and I expecting our first child in March, but we're also waiting until the baby is born to find out whether we're having a boy or a girl. I chose this book as our first baby name source because it didn't just list hundreds of names (with separate entries based on spelling) with their meanings. I appreciated the trend information and name variants and was intrigued by the "sister and brother" information that offered suggestions of names with a similar style and feeling. With that said, though, I did find myself actually missing the meanings of the names that I had put on our list of potential names for our child. Not that it's a terrible hardship to look up meanings elsewhere... it just would have been nice to have everything in one place!

I didn't read every page of this - obviously I just focused on the girl names. But I really liked the format and the quick snapshots of each name and descriptions of their personalities. This book gave me a few extra names to consider when I hit a wall in the naming game.

What a fun way to explore names by seeing the popularity trends through time periods, seeing suggestions of names for siblings, and the groupings of names by themes. I liked the focus on being thoughtful of what a name may remind people of from pop culture or history, to help parents be more informed of how their child’s chosen name can come across. The only things I could see as future improvements to the book would be listing the meanings of names and having more names from diverse backgrounds reflective of the U.S. population (if that’s the intended audience).

Absolutely pointless, since it doesnt concretely list the origin or meaning of nearly any of the names. I do t really need a paragraph blurb insisting that the name is, in fact, a real name and no information whatsoever.

I use this book ALL the time for naming my characters. I originally bought it to find a name for my daughter, but it has all of these neat charts and graphs and can give you an idea of when a name was popular--really helpful for writers. So, if you're a writer AND pregnant, then it can really be the gift that keeps on giving!

Maybe not the most comprehensive of name books, but I LOVE that it gives you the "vibes". Like all culture-based books my edition is a little out of date, but I really appreciate the thoroughness and it is still useful! I especially love the suggestions for sibling names.

I really liked that this book listed "brother/sister" names for each name in the "snapshot" section. I started to realize that I did like similiar type names.

I also really liked the "Style Families" section in the back. These lists of grouped names (whether by style, heritage, etc.) were more useful and fun to read than just a dictionary of names.