Baby name book recommendations

April 11, 2017 9:37 AM

It sounds so easy, but I can't find what I'm looking for: a baby name book that meets my criteria. More below the fold.

Not pregnant, but planning! Looking for a baby name book that meets my (apparently really picky) criteria:

• Must have name origins.
• Must have pronunciation.
• Must be alphabetized.
• Must have a gender neutral name category.
• No ridiculous categories like "green," "vintage chic," "hipster" or "metrodude"
• Must have many names to choose from, not just the most/least popular.
• No celebrity *anything.*

posted by onecircleaday to Grab Bag (7 answers total)

Best answer: "The Baby Name Wizard" looks like it might fit, but it's not perfect. I'm not sure if any of the categories would strike you as ridiculous, but most of them aren't (Celtic, Nickname-proof, Italian, Timeless, etc) and you can ignore the ones that don't strike your fancy.

One thing I liked about it is that for each name there was a "Brothers" and "Sisters" listing, which are other sibling names in the same style as that one. So if you like "Alistair", but not enough to name the kid Alistair, then perhaps the "brother" names of Evander, Colin, or Magnus work better for you.

It also has graphs of the names popularity over time. I'm not sure what you do with that, but I thought it was cute.

It's lacking detailed name origins, however, so you will need another book in addition to this one.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 9:57 AM on April 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

Best answer: It sounds like you might be better off finding a thick book that has a solid gender-neutral section (example) and just ripping out the celebrity and nonsense chapters you don't like to look at.
posted by aimedwander at 11:01 AM on April 11, 2017 [5 favorites]

Best answer: As you may have already discovered, Baby Name Wizard is also a fantastic website with a blog and fora (the graphs over time are largely to help you guess current popularity, which some people care a lot about one direction or the other). I found it 1000x more helpful than the book. Honestly, we just spent a long evening at a Barnes and Noble reading through their collection to get a more comprehensive sense of the options and make sure we weren't overlooking anything major.
posted by teremala at 12:44 PM on April 11, 2017

Response by poster: Wow, Baby Name Wizard is pretty neat! I really like the "brother and sister" recommendations.

Thank you, all, for the suggestions.
posted by onecircleaday at 2:14 PM on April 11, 2017

Best answer: http://namenerds.com/uucn/ Has lists and behindthename.com has pronunciations and origins (and lists and gender neutral lists).
posted by azalea_chant at 4:28 PM on April 11, 2017

I really liked Baby Name Wizard and found the name origins so interesting.
posted by bighappyhairydog at 8:12 PM on April 11, 2017

Seconding Behind the Name. I like the simpler interface there, but Baby Name Wizard is also nice!
posted by daisyk at 7:10 AM on April 12, 2017