The Penguin Book of Baby Names

by David Pickering

Lists more than 5,000 names from classic favorites to more esoteric choices, providing facts and stories illuminating each name's meaning while listing popular celebrity names and top 10 names throughout the centuries. Original.

Genres: Nonfiction, Parenting, Reference

428 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

With the exciting news that we’re are expecting a little girl in the new year, one of our friends lent us this book for inspiration.
Who’d have thought picking a name would be so difficult?!?

The book is divided up by girls then boys name in alphabetical order, with some context and abbreviations in most cases.

Still undecided but have a couple of ideas now, all I can say for certain is that expect plenty of children book reviews in the months and years ahead - so that I can complete my Goodreads challenges...

[Malkiboy · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s some interesting names in here. But this book misses out loads of interesting names. There’re some traditional names, but I was disappointed by the amount of good names there are not included in here. There isn’t that much information in the book. The cover states that there are over 5000 names, but there are numbers at the top of the pages and when added together for the main names, there’s about 1000 names. This includes variants of names (which is good) but there aren’t that many and too Europe-dominated. Names like Elizabeth have a lot of variations in different languages, but the ones here are either French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Hebrew or nicknames. This thing specified that ‘Santiago’ means ‘Saint James’; but it doesn’t say that ‘Diego’ means James. But at least there’s some diversity in names. Could be improved by a lot.

[Miss Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best layout of the batch I read. Decent variety.

Missing pronunciation. Also makes you go back to an original name to find a meaning rather than just listing it again next to a derivative.

[Quill]

No, I'm not pregnant. I'm as CHILDFREE as I can be. But, I needed names for characters in a story. That's why I read it. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay, although glad we were just using it to reinforce Tikki Tikki Tembo and not to find a child's name. There isn't a lot of information given for each name. Online sources are much better for that.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book doesn't have a lot of names, but the layout and type size make it an easy one to effectively skim, so for that I appreciated it. Also had good cross-reference for related names or spellings.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very little diversity except for what seem to be a disproportionate number of Welsh names.

[Dre]

the search continues!