The Brilliant Book of Baby Names: What’s best, what’s hot and what’s not. Linda Rosenkrantz

to sift through, so much new information about the importance of names, such creative baby naming in Hollywood and on the Web. How can you tell if a name is too popular or not mainstream enough, wonderfully creative or just plain weird? How can you find the name that is perfect for you and your baby?

      We can help. In fact, we’ve been helping parents find the perfect name for their babies for two decades. We helped launch this wide – and wild – new world of names with our book Beyond Jennifer & Jason, first published in the pre–Baby Gap, pre-starbaby 1980s, back when everybody just named their babies after themselves or picked one of the trendy names of the day. Please, we urged parents: Look beyond the obvious choices. Consider using your mother’s maiden name as your daughter’s first, or dust off Grandpa’s name for your son. Look to your cultural heritage for a name or pluck one from a map.

      Now that Jennifer and Jason are all grown up and naming babies of their own, it’s time for a new kind of book. The baby-naming shelves have become engorged with dozens of name dictionaries on steroids, most of them stuffed with ridiculous names and misleading, often made-up definitions and copycat lists. One, for example, lists Seth under ‘Names Teachers Can’t Pronounce,’ while another informs us that the definition of Goddess is ‘gorgeous’. You and your baby deserve a lot better than that.

      And that’s why we wrote The Brilliant Book of Baby Names. As the United States’ foremost experts on style and names – we also wrote the bestselling Cool Names for Babies and have been interviewed about baby naming by everyone from The New York Times to Us Weekly to The Today Show and Oprah – we found ourselves in a position to create a unique baby-naming resource as authoritative, stylish and original as our other books, to provide the name information needed to make the all-important choice both you and your child will be happy with forever.

      The crowning achievement of our twenty years’ experience researching and writing about names in eight other books that have sold millions of copies, The Brilliant Book of Baby Names:

       Offers more than 50,000 terrific names from around the world, including a multitude of creative choices found nowhere else. References to the Top 100 names are UK government statistics for England and Wales.

       Includes real and accurate information on where the names come from and what they mean in their original language, as well as how they’re perceived in the modern world.

       Guides you through the maze of style and image considerations by giving you expert enlightened and enlightening commentary on every name in the book.

       Helps you make the perfect name decision via the kind of specialised lists that we invented and still do best. Here are more than two hundred lists of beautiful names and strong names, names stars are giving their kids and names that would shock your grandma, lists of French names and African names and names you should consider if you like Emily but want to move beyond it.

       Keeps you entertained while you’re making your momentous choice, with writing that’s as sharp as it is illuminating.

      Traditionally, name books start with tips for parents on choosing a name – make sure the first name goes with your last and that you don’t give your kid the initials P.I.G. – things you wouldn’t have much trouble figuring out for yourself. Instead, as you embark on the great baby-naming adventure in this enlightened age, we offer a new level of advice on choosing a name:

      TODAY’S ESSENTIAL TOP-10 OF BABY NAMING

      1. Aim to fall in love with a name. Remember falling in love with your partner? Swooning the first time you heard your baby’s heartbeat? That’s the kind of emotional reaction you should go for with a name, too. Look for one that you love so much it makes your heart pound, that you can’t stop thinking about, that you keep loving no matter what anybody says.

      2. Don’t pay too much attention to what other people think. It’s lots of fun talking about names with your spouse, your friends, your family. Everyone will ask which names you’re considering – and then they’ll do their best to convince you that those names are stupid, ugly, ridiculous choices, and that you should pick the names they like instead. The problem is, these people are only giving their subjective opinions. Your parents’ ideas are several decades out of style, your childless friends are clueless and the grocer and the postman – yes, everyone wants to get into the act – know even less. Talk about it if you like. Then tune out all those other opinions and make the big decision yourself – along with your partner.

      3. Remember, it’s more about your child than about you. Love aside, it’s important to keep in mind that your child is the one who’s going to live with your name choice – not just when he’s a baby, oblivious in your arms, but in the playground and in the school canteen and on job interviews and at his fortieth birthday party and as an old man. The point is, it doesn’t matter whether your friends think a name is cool or what kind of attention you get on your favourite baby-naming notice board for your ideas. Your child will be the one perspiring in his interview suit or hobbling around the nursing home, thinking, ‘Crikey! Why did they have to name me Harley?’

      4. But know that Harley isn’t the same name it was when you were a child. Names have changed in a big way, so that the names that would have been considered strange or that would have gotten you teased in the playground when you were in school are now accepted as completely normal. Interchangeable names for boys and girls? Totally standard – though you still don’t want to name your son Sue. (You probably don’t want to name your daughter Sue either, but for different reasons.) Ethnic names? Found in many cities throughout the country. Unconventional spellings and invented names? Often, the traditional spelling is now the exception, and the girl down the road is more likely to be named Nevaeh than Nancy. It’s a whole new baby-naming world out there.

      5. Expand your view of creativity. Consistent with this new world of baby naming is the pressure lots of parents feel to be creative in their choices. Inventing a name or varying a spelling is great if that’s your style, but there are lots of other ways to be creative, and this book can help you explore them. Try a fresh international twist on a familiar name. Consider names you never even knew existed; you’ll find a wide menu of choices here that have never appeared in any name book before.

      6. Look for a name with meaning. A name’s meaning these days extends far beyond the original ‘spear carrier’ or ‘God is gracious’. You’ll want to consider what a name means in terms of your family history, your individual experience, your personal style. Can you find a name that relates to your family tree? Your cultural background? How about a place name or a word name or an occupational name that signals something with personal significance to you? Explore what different names mean in relation to your sense of style, of history, of yourself and your partner. A name that connects deeply on several levels will resonate into the future for both you and your child.

      7. Do your own research. Everything you need from a book may be here, but you might also want to gather your own intelligence. Visit your local playground or read the birth announcements to familiarise yourself with the naming trends in your neighbourhood. Find the most current popularity lists of baby names for both girls and boys at the British government’s website www.statistics.gov.uk. Depending on your needs and tastes, you might also want to look at our style-oriented books, Beyond Jennifer & Jason, Madison and Montana, and Cool Names for Babies and our ethnic baby-naming guides, Beyond Shannon & Sean or Beyond Sarah & Sam.

      8.Put baby naming in perspective. Of course, we believe names are important. They telegraph messages about a person’s class, family, ethnicity, gender, creativity, intelligence – messages that you, as a conscientious parent, want to control. You want to do everything you can to choose the best possible name. And yet, let’s not get carried away. Books that tell you that a name controls your child’s destiny or holds the key to success are just trying to persuade you to buy something with little validity.

      9. Have fun.