A Few of My Favorite Things: The Baby Name Wizard

Well, here we are again. Expecting a child in about 5 months (gasp!) and faced with the daunting task of picking a name for the little sucker. I take this task very, very seriously, as I think parents ought to- though I am not often reassured that this is the case when I read through the births page of the newspaper! Luckily, there is no shortage of advice or books on the matter! By far, my favorite book is "The Baby Name Wizard" by Laura Wattenburg.

Before I tell you about the book, I have to tell you that my husband accuses me of having all kinds of crazy rules about baby naming. For instance, it is unacceptable to name our next child Lucy (a perfectly lovely name) because a) we already have a Lilly and they are basically the same and b) everyone else in the house has a name that starts with M, so if we give out another L name it will seem like we are trying too hard to match. Obviously, this means that all M names are out as well as anything with an "x" and anything with double "ll"s. In addition, having a Lilly and a Max means that naming the next kid Dylan (another perfectly fine name) is out because it is not in the same genre. Okay, so maybe I have a few kooky rules, but I am just trying to look out for the little person and, of course, make sure that no one reads our Christmas cards and says, "huh"?

Back to the book-- For each name listed, they give you the current popularity rating, a graph depicting the name's popularity over time, nicknames, variants and my two favorite features: 1. the "style" meaning what lists or categories it falls into (choices includes things like "Nickname Proof", "Solid Citizens" and "Guys and Dolls") and 2. Sisters and Brothers, which is "names that match in style and feeling" and could be, well, sisters or brothers of the name in question. I really love this feature and have been known to spend hours combing through these lists of sisters and brothers looking for new suggestions and trying to come up with the perfect fit. The back of the book is filled with all kinds of lists, including all of the categories that I mentioned above. The Baby Name Wizard folks also put up a website which has a lot of great features and has quickly become my favorite baby-name website as well. Here you can track a names popularity over time, map a name, which is to locate is popularity by region of the country, or use Namepedia- a baby name encyclopedia full of information about names.

Of course, the merits of the book itself aside one of the reasons that I love "The Baby Name Wizard" is because it was given to me by a good friend when I was pregnant with my first child (almost 5 years ago!) and came filled with little sticky note suggestions and funny comments. Since then, the book has been passed around to friends several times- Each couple uses their own system for marking names and, while many of the pages are now falling out, the front cover boasts the names of 8 babies that the book has helped to name! If only I could come up with something brilliant for that 9th one.....