I highly recommend this book to anyone having children, or just interested in names. Having read (okay, browsed) more than a few name books in recent months, I can definitely say this is the best one out there.
The methodology involved in getting you to the perfect name is brilliant. And the format is handy and accessible.
More than that, though, Wattenberg can write. She's concise, helpful, and entertaining, all at the same time. Seriously, she could easily be a columnist or something else involving real writing. I very much enjoyed this book.

This book has great ideas, but needs to be more current. The plan is to look at trends, but all the graphs are from 1900-2000 and data published is from 2005. Needs a generational update (or a current website).

Best baby name book ever...charts of each name's popularity, fascinating explanations...take a look.

Given my current obsession with baby names I have been trying to find a book that is more than just a laundry list of names. This book is far more interesting and informative about current style and trends in naming than any other book you can find on the topic.

Not much variety in this set of names. The author's assumed audience is white cisgender women who are highly invested in the gender binary. Going cover to cover I did manage to find a couple of dozen names that my partner didn't immediately reject.

Love it. Includes useful lists and isn't just a conglomeration of the largest number of names they could find - it's actually thoughtful and worth reading if you're trying to come up with a name for your baby.

I hate the title of this book, and for that reason alone am taking away a star. The gimmicky title almost stopped me from picking it up... but I'm so glad that I read it anyway, because it is by far the best name book I've seen. It offers a great detailed look at a large number of names - including information on the name's current popularity and a small graph noting its popularity over time, potential nicknames and variants of the name, sister and brother names (helpful as a 'if you like this name, you might also like' source), and a description of the name that places it culturally and stylistically and offers examples of people with that name in the world (writers, celebrities, historical figures, etc.). It also has a huge number of lists of names categorized by style (not all of which get the full detail treatment in the earlier section of the book). Examples of style lists include: androgynous, antique charm, Biblical, brisk and breezy, country and western, exotic traditionals, Italian, Jewish, literary and artistic, mythological, place names, timeless, and beyond... Lots of great ideas for baby names, and interesting and useful information about many of the suggested options.

Pg 213

Probably the best baby name book that we looked through. It lists brother and sister names that often appear clustered in communities and are similar in style. These brother/sister lists actually matched many of the names we were considering and are very helpful.

I loved the categories and that there wasn't an absolutely ridiculous number of names included. I felt like just the best were here. I'll probably check it out one more time once we find out if it's a boy or a girl.

Naming a baby is hard. This book was fun, because it looks at the various cultural/regional differences in the US (northeastern names very different from southern, for example) and it tells you what celebrity/popular character/politician etc that the name you pick out might be connected to. Veronica was a close choice for us, and both Veronica Mars (yes!) and Veronica Lake were mentioned.

Our choices were pretty solid before we picked this up, but it was fun to browse and see what our name(s) mean.

I love this book! As a writer who frequently can't think of a decent name, either for a main character or a secondary character, this book perfectly solved my issues. It's more than a simple list of male and female names. With multiple organizations and groupings of names, it is so much easier to explore names with similar meanings, origins and sounds.