Product Description

Do you love or hate your name? Do you know what it really means? How do you choose the right name for someone? We all have a first name, but how many of us really know its origin and history?
This comprehensive dictionary provides a fascinating collection of linguistic, historical, and associated information about some 7,000 names, making it the ideal reference for linguists and family historians, as well as an important source of information for parents choosing a name for a child. It is the ultimate first name handbook, a delightfully informative, comprehensive survey of European and American names. New to this edition are two appendices which give the dictionary an international appeal: Common Names in the Arab World and Common Names of the Indian Subcontinent. These appendices should be especially helpful to linguists and historians interested in these parts of the world. Typical entries provide the linguistic and ethnic root of a name. "Jennifer," for instance, is a Cornish form of "Guinevere." Most entries also include the non-English form or cognate of a name. No other handbook comes close to the wealth of information found here.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1053282 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-03
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

From School Library Journal
YA-- A wonderful book that provides the origins of 7,000 names found in the English-speaking world, giving their history, usage trends, and explaining how they are used in other languages. In addition, each entry highlights influences that determine popularity. Supplements list names from the often difficult to find Arab world and the Indian subcontinent.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
`Review from previous edition A book on names is a must-have for every parent-to-be, and this is one of the most comprehensive titles' The Independent

`I have returned to this dictionary again and again for sheer pleasure' Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times

`full of anecdotal material as well as historical facts' Glasgow Herald

`a colourful hunting ground and interesting reading' Maternity and Mothercraft

`the best available work on the subject' Verbatim

About the Author

Patrick Hanks has been a lexicographer and linguistic researcher for over twenty-five years. Flavia Hodges is a philologist, lexicographer, and publisher.

Customer Reviews

Many sections, some names hard to find
Oxford Dictionary of First Names

I have both of the books discussed by the other reviewers here, "A Concise Dictionary of First Names", 1992 ed, ISBN 0198661908, and "Oxford Dictionary of First Names", 2006 ed, ISBN 978-0198610601. Contrary to what the other reviewer stated, the Concise book (240 pages) is NOT a subset of the larger Oxford book on first names (which stops numbering pages after 285, but is close to 400 pages). In the acknowledgements section at the front of the Concise book, the authors even state that SOME of the names came from the larger Oxford book, but not all. My daughter and I sat down with both books and picked off ten names from the Concise book and looked for them in the larger Oxford book. Of those ten, these three were not there (or in the case of Justus, were considerably shortened):

Redmond, an Irish Gaelic form of Raymond
Mihangel, Welsh form of Michael (we eventually found this hidden in the Appendix)
Justus, Latin name taken from surnames in Germany and Netherlands (the Oxford book has an abbreviated version of the origins of this name)

So, the Concise book has names in it that are not in the larger Oxford edition and, from what I can tell, many of them are of Irish or British descent. Since I'm half Irish, that's pretty important to me. There are names of neighbors, family friends, and other relatives that I'd like to see in a baby name book and they're in the Concise version, but not in the Oxford. I have both and have found them indispensable.

If you're looking for really bizarre names, as in Hollywood flavor-of-the-week names, this book doesn't have them.

If you're looking for Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Indian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Scandinavian, Scottish, Spanish, and Welsh names each in their own section in the Appendix, then you're in luck, because this book DOES have them.

One thing that bothered me considerably about this book was that different spellings of the same name are lumped together under one spelling or possibly two, but not ALL of the various spellings, so you can quite easily miss the name you're actually looking for. For that, I knocked off a star. The other thing that bothered me about this book was that all of those names in the appendices that are supposed to be native to one language actually cross several, and yet they appear only in the appendices and not in the first part of the book, the alphabetical listings. So again, it's quite easy to miss the name you're looking for. For that, I knocked off another star.

If Oxford had listed every name in this book in one long alphabetical listing, I would have given this book five stars. But, since there are so many places to look to find what you're actually looking for, I just can't give it that high of a rating. I had to hunt and peck to find names I already knew. That's a real hindrance. Another thing I noticed was that some of the origins in here are shortened from other books. I LIKE the long histories. I'd like to see the story behind a name. For that reason, and the alphabetical listings, I usually pick up the Concise book before this one.

The Concise book can be found here, A Concise Dictionary of First Names

Nothing of interest here
Every entry is identical. Tells you nothing of interest. The one thing you want to know, what the name means, is hard to find, if it's mentioned at all. Very disappointing.

This is the best reference book on first names.
I have often found need for this book. It gives detailed etymologies of names, of famous persons bearing the name, and cross-references different forms of the name (as nick, male/female, and other languages). A name book done up as a proper reference book. It also has sections on Hindi/Indian and Muslim/Arabic names.