Laura Wattenberg - The Baby Name Wizard: A Magical Method for Finding the Perfect Name for Your Baby

Its one thing to write a book.

Its another thing to live a book. In the four years since the first Baby Name Wizard was published, Ive been living the Wizard life, talking with hundreds of parents about naming babies. Thousands more readers from around the world have come to BabyNameWizard.com and weighed in with insights on names and style. And millions (yes, millions) have used the websites tools to learn more about name trends and popularity. Ive done my best to channel all the lessons learned to make this edition of The Baby Name Wizard an even bigger, richer, and more helpful book. By reader request, pronunciation guides now accompany every Name Snapshot.

Ive added new style categories, and hundreds of new names. The graphs have been updated, brother/sister suggestions refined, name descriptions enhanced; all in all, thousands and thousands of changes have been made throughout the book. Once you narrow down a short list of names, please stop by BabyNameWizard.com to learn even more. Try the NameVoyager to explore the popularity of names over time, and visit the Namipedia for a wealth of information on every name: origins, maps of usage, and input and opinions from parents around the world. (Better yet, contribute some input of your own!) And please do drop me a line if you have a naming story to share. The more I study names, the more the subject amazes me.

Names are a source of perpetual fascination, a window onto our values, our culture, and our dreams. Many thanks,
Laura Wattenberg

When my first daughter was a baby, I noticed a curious phenomenon. It seemed that every baby girl we met in Riverside Park in New York was named either Hannah or Olivia. But every one of their mothers said she had chosen the name to be unusual! That was my introduction to the mysterious landscape of modern names. Like hairstyles and hemlines, names have fashions that change with each generation. Each name has a social meaning that evolves, shaped by the people who bear it and the world that surrounds it.

When the time came to choose a name for my second child, I set out to find a map of the name landscape. Name dictionaries were an obvious place to start, but names are far more than words. Knowing that Olivia comes from the Latin word for olive doesnt tell you whether there will be three other Olivias on your block. And learning that Elmo has the same root as helmet doesnt clue you in that Elmo is a furry red Muppet. What I wanted wasnt a dictionary but a practical guide to name fashions, history, and style. Over the following years I compiled a huge database of name information: Popularity data from cities and countries around the world.

Birth announcements in Ivy League alumni magazines. Lists of Catholic saints. African-American sorority memberships. Soap opera cast lists. Colonial census records. Then I developed computer models to spot trends and identify style categories.

My Name Matchmaker, for instance, was a program designed to take any name and pinpoint others with a similar style and feeling. I knew I was on to something when I told the Matchmaker the names of my two daughters, and the top boys match it suggested was the very name my husband and I had agreed on for a boy. Of course, it takes a human to interpret the data and make the final judgments. Its my own call to say that a boy named Romeo matches a girl named Valentine. In the end, the point of all the research and technology is to produce a real-world guide to names, with the kind of information thats worth kibitzing over. A hearty dinnertime debate over the merits of a name such as Cabot or Clark is the best compliment this book could receive.

Consider the Baby Name Wizard a field guide to American names. Its designed to help you understand whats out there, identify name styles, and spot trends. But above all, its designed to guide you to ideas that fit your own personal taste and style.

Not long ago, I heard an expectant mother beside herself with outrage. She had just learned that another woman in her small town had stolen her baby name! No, she admitted, she had never met the woman. But for years now she had been planning to name a baby Keaton, a name she had personally invented, and now there was another little Keaton right across town.

Someone must have told that other mother her own secret, special name. Thief! Chances are this was not really a case of name larceny. That mom had just run into a startling fact of baby name life: our tastes, which feel so personal, are communal creations. Keaton? Well, its a surname ending in n, a style parents are flocking to for fresh ideas that sound like classic names. K in particular is a hot first letter. And dont forget that almost every parent today grew up watching Alex Keaton on