Lorilee Craker - A Is for Atticus: Baby Names from Great Books

Copyright 2008 by Lorilee Craker

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Center Street

Hachette Book Group USA

237 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10017

Visit our Web site at www.centerstreet.com.

First eBook Edition: August 2008

ISBN: 978-1-599-95147-8

Also by Lorilee Craker

Pop Culture Mom: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid Age

Date Night in a Minivan: Revving Up Your Marriage After the Kids Arrive

The Wide-Eyed Wonder Years: A Mommy Guide to Preschool Daze

Just Give Me a Little Piece of Quiet: Mini Retreats for a Moms Soul

We Should Do This More Often: A Parents Guide to Passion, Romance, and Other Pre-Child Activities You Vaguely Recall

See How They Run: An Energizing Guide to Keeping Up with Your Turbo Toddler

O For a Thousand Nights to Sleep: An Eye-Opening Guide to the Wonder-Filled Months of Babys First Year

When the Belly Button Pops, the Babys Done

A Is for Adam: Biblical Baby Names

To Jonah Abram Reimer, Ezra Finney Brandt, and Phoebe Min-Ju Jayne:

By any other names you would still be Gods best gifts to Daddy and me.

To the following people, my abiding thanks and a latte for their personal encouragement and for helping me in some way write this book I so loved:

Linda Reimer, Rachel Arnold, Sheri Rodriguez, Ann Byle, Shelly Beach, Tracy Groot, Angela Blyker, Alison Hodgson, Cynthia Beach, Katrina De Man, Sharon Carrns, Mary Jo Haab, Nancy Rubin, Chip MacGregor, Chris Park, Lori Quinn, and Linda Van Steinvoorn. Everyone at Hachette Book Group and Center Street Books.

Special thanks to Sarah Sper, who championed this book from day one and has been a dream editor every step of the way. Also, I am grateful to Debra Rienstra, professor of English at Calvin College, for her scholarly input and for placing The Faerie Queene on my radar, and to the staff at Poohs Corner, especially Sally Bulthuis, Camille DeBoer, and Margaret Bulgarella, for their boundless enthusiasm for childrens books.

And extra-special thanks to Doyle, Jonah, Ezra, and Phoebe Craker for giving me their keen opinions on the names in this book, and mostly for loving me so well through the writing of it.

I f so many books, so little time is your mantra, youll find a wealth of baby-name ideas from the stories and characters you love.

You know what to expect from baby-name books: an endless, dull list of names with their dictionary definitions. Millions of prospective parents thumb through these dry tomes every year in search of the perfect name for their perfect baby.

As the author of eight parenting books, including one baby-name book, one question I get all the time is this: How can our babys name really mean something to us beyond just the fact that it sounds nice? Todays baby namers want their offsprings ID to reflect some character quality, cultural heritage, spiritual reference, or some slice of family history that is deeply meaningful to them. The Bible is a fantastic source of such names, as I discovered while naming my own brood, but another untapped gold mine is your bookshelf, filled with dog-eared, spine-cracked, loved-on books that mean so much to you.

Enter A is for Atticus, which of course is inspired by the unflinchingly just Atticus Finch from the book many folks consider their all-time favorite: To Kill a Mockingbird.

Quality Over Quantity

Interesting fact: Research shows the vast majority of parents-to-be pluck their name choice from the same list of five hundred names. That means people dont actually need the encyclopedia-size book with five thousand choices. Its like the huge menu you feel you have to pore over, when meanwhile what you really need is fewer choicesand more information about each choice!

A is for Atticus gives bookish parents quality over quantity. It is an earthy guide to heavenly names, profiling the most gorgeous, viable, and meaningful names from great books.

Recently, I came across a literature junkie who dubbed his son Yeats in honor of the poet. Friends conferred the Shakespearean name Ariel on their daughter, and other pals got names for their Little Women, Josephine and Louisa, from a favorite childhood classic. I also know more than one young woman who never forgot the adventures of the irrepressible red-haired orphan from Prince Edward Island, Anne of Green Gables: they gave their daughters the middle or first name Anne, with an e of course!

And my name, Lorilee, is actually rooted in my moms girlhood penchant for reading the Bobbsey Twins books by Laura Lee Hope.

Yes, you want a name for your baby that is fresh, beautiful, and suited stylistically to your tastes. But you also want something more. Given the feedback from my first baby-name book, A Is for Adam, I know that when parents dub their babies with Bible names, they hope that Noahs faith, Lydias industriousness, Tabithas kindness, or Calebs boldness will rub off on their namesakesor at least inspire them to live up to the best qualities their names evoke. Truly, the characters we love from the books we cherish inspire the same kind of wishes for their namesakes.

Celebrity Trend

Want proof that lit names are white hot? Check out the list below of star babies with librarian-approved IDs. Why star babies? Celebs, for better or worse, have become our cultures pioneers when it comes to what we name our babies. (Example: Eight years ago, Heather Locklear and Richie Sambora dusted off Ava, a glamorous yet musty name from the props trunks on the studio lots of the 1940s. Today, Ava is number 10 on the top 100 names in the USA, and thank-you notes go to Heather and Richie. People who have never seen Locklear on the tube or Sambora in one Bon Jovi concert or video nonetheless grew fond of Ava through hearing it over and over again.) This is how names filter through Tinseltown and eventually end up in Tacoma, Toronto, and Topeka. Check out how the trendsetters have latched on to literary names in their quest for the hippest and the hottest:

In-Depth Name Profiles

A is for Atticus answers the questions that plague pregnant women during sleepless nights of kicks and muscle spasms, and also occur to their husbands in broad daylight:

How popular is this name, and how will this affect my child? (Emma is the number one name in the country. Will my little Emma be one of six in her playgroup?)

What are other people going to think about my baby (and me) based on his name?

Will my child be teased for having a truly unique literary name, like Gulliver or Moby?

Instead of just listing names (yawn), each name selected for A is for Atticus is profiled for its uniqueness, image, and whether or not it is up-and-coming or more stale than last weeks doughnuts. Some listings include other pertinent, real-world info, such as ambigender options, cultural spins, and nicknames