Beyond Jennifer & Jason: An Enlightened Guide to Naming Your Baby

If you?re wondering why I still keep this book dog-eared on my desk I will tell you now. If you?re not interested, just skip to the end, and vote. This little book is a treasure trove of names for the scores of characters that appear in my short fiction and poems who all need unique names. The Internet has plenty of baby name sites, but this book is a lot easier than scrolling through page after page on a cranky web site that flashes annoying ads the whole time. Get this book if you're thinking of having kids, or perhaps need some help picking a nice name for that delightful mother-in-law character in your first novel. The book also comes in handy for naming pets. We have a cat named Ben, and a dog named Jack. If we ever get a fish tank, I?ll flip to the index, and start naming away.


Overrated Book and Lacked Substance!   October 23, 2003
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

This book lacks substance--no origin, unorganized and poorly researched. If you want to see the origin of the names, an excellent researched book of baby names, I strongly recommend the "Dictionary of First Names" by Adrian Room.


lots of food for thought   June 10, 2000
clickette (Toronto, Canada)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

I think of this as kind of a "companion" book for people researching names - I don't know that it would really fill the bill to be the one and only source a couple uses to make their final decision, but it really motivates you to put some effort into coming up with the most permanent gift you will ever give your child. Whether or not one agrees with the highly subjective evaluations the authors give names on many levels, the book provides food for thought on aspects I certainly wouldn't have thought about.

Plus: it reads amazingly easily - as opposed to 99% of other books I ploughed through, which became a chore.

One weakness: names from other cultural backgrounds. While these are included - and not just as politically correct oddities, but as valid and even "hip" choices - I question where they were drawn from or how chosen for inclusion. As a native German speaker, I was very interested to see the German list. Given that it was, as can be expected, small (for more extensive lists I would logically look elsewhere than this type of book)I was surprised at how many names were inlcluded that I had never heard of before - much less known anyone of that name. If the German list was so skewed, I would assume that other language groups were as well.