With a few friends expecting babies more than one conversation recently has turned to choosing names. That monumental task of giving your child a moniker which they (and you) will live with for the whole of their lives. Some people find it easy while others find it an ordeal.
While choosing Milla’s name came quite easily for us when it came to Monty’s we found it harder. Our first choice boy’s name was Alfie which by the time it came to having our second already belonged to half a dozen or so children we knew (thank you Michael Cane, Shirley Hughes and Eastenders for the influence). Traditional name books just left us swimming in a sea of names each with five different spellings (how else do you get to 6,007?) and none the better off for inspiration. It was then that I remembered writing about Laura Wattenberg’s name voyager and decided to buy her book.
The Baby Name Wizard is unlike any baby name book I have ever encountered. Rather than reams of names all listed in alphabetical order, she has just a few hundred. The secret behind her book is establishing style groups which join together tastes in naming . In the alphabetical names list section you get a short definition, style group and suggestions for sibling names. If you find you are hitting it off with a certain style you can head to the next section which lists names in their groupings.
What this book does is stimulate your thinking about names. We found that the names on Monty’s short list lead to other names we liked and ultimately helped us to decide what we would name him. Whenever anyone tells me they are having trouble thinking of names I lend them my copy of this book, it is pure gold.
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