The Brilliant Book of Baby Names: What’s best, what’s hot and what’s not. Linda Rosenkrantz

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       Introduction

      Choosing the right name can seem daunting these days, with so many choices to sift through, so much new information about the importance of names, such creative baby naming in Hollywood and on the Web. How can you tell if a name is too popular or not mainstream enough, wonderfully creative or just plain weird? How can you find the name that is perfect for you and your baby?

      We can help. In fact, we’ve been helping parents find the perfect name for their babies for two decades. We helped launch this wide – and wild – new world of names with our book Beyond Jennifer & Jason, first published in the pre–Baby Gap, pre-starbaby 1980s, back when everybody just named their babies after themselves or picked one of the trendy names of the day. Please, we urged parents: Look beyond the obvious choices. Consider using your mother’s maiden name as your daughter’s first, or dust off Grandpa’s name for your son. Look to your cultural heritage for a name or pluck one from a map.

      Now that Jennifer and Jason are all grown up and naming babies of their own, it’s time for a new kind of book. The baby-naming shelves have become engorged with dozens of name dictionaries on steroids, most of them stuffed with ridiculous names and misleading, often made-up definitions and copycat lists. One, for example, lists Seth under ‘Names Teachers Can’t Pronounce,’ while another informs us that the definition of Goddess is ‘gorgeous’. You and your baby deserve a lot better than that.

      And that’s why we wrote The Brilliant Book of Baby Names. As the United States’ foremost experts on style and names – we also wrote the bestselling Cool Names for Babies and have been interviewed about baby naming by everyone from The New York Times to Us Weekly to The Today Show and Oprah – we found ourselves in a position to create a unique baby-naming resource as authoritative, stylish and original as our other books, to provide the name information needed to make the all-important choice both you and your child will be happy with forever.

      The crowning achievement of our twenty years’ experience researching and writing about names in eight other books that have sold millions of copies, The Brilliant Book of Baby Names:

      Traditionally, name books start with tips for parents on choosing a name – make sure the first name goes with your last and that you don’t give your kid the initials P.I.G. – things you wouldn’t have much trouble figuring out for yourself. Instead, as you embark on the great baby-naming adventure in this enlightened age, we offer a new level of advice on choosing a name:

      TODAY’S ESSENTIAL TOP-10 OF BABY NAMING

      1. Aim to fall in love with a name. Remember falling in love with your partner? Swooning the first time you heard your baby’s heartbeat? That’s the kind of emotional reaction you should go for with a name, too. Look for one that you love so much it makes your heart pound, that you can’t stop thinking about, that you keep loving no matter what anybody says.

      2. Don’t pay too much attention to what other people think. It’s lots of fun talking about names with your spouse, your friends, your family. Everyone will ask which names you’re considering – and then they’ll do their best to convince you that those names are stupid, ugly, ridiculous choices, and that you should pick the names they like instead. The problem is, these people are only giving their subjective opinions. Your parents’ ideas are several decades out of style, your childless friends are clueless and the grocer and the postman – yes, everyone wants to get into the act – know even less. Talk about it if you like. Then tune out all those other opinions and make the big decision yourself – along with your partner.

      3. Remember, it’s more about your child than about you. Love aside, it’s important to keep in mind that your child is the one who’s going to live with your name choice – not just when he’s a baby, oblivious in your arms, but in the playground and in the school canteen and on job interviews and at his fortieth birthday party and as an old man. The point is, it doesn’t matter whether your friends think a name is cool or what kind of attention you get on your favourite baby-naming notice board for your ideas. Your child will be the one perspiring in his interview suit or hobbling around the nursing home, thinking, ‘Crikey! Why did they have to name me Harley?’

      4. But know that Harley isn’t the same name it was when you were a child. Names have changed in a big way, so that the names that would have been considered strange or that would have gotten you teased in the playground when you were in school are now accepted as completely normal. Interchangeable names for boys and girls? Totally standard – though you still don’t want to name your son Sue. (You probably don’t want to name your daughter Sue either, but for different reasons.) Ethnic names? Found in many cities throughout the country. Unconventional spellings and invented names? Often, the traditional spelling is now the exception, and the girl down the road is more likely to be named Nevaeh than Nancy. It’s a whole new baby-naming world out there.

      5. Expand your view of creativity. Consistent with this new world of baby naming is the pressure lots of parents feel to be creative in their choices. Inventing a name or varying a spelling is great if that’s your style, but there are lots of other ways to be creative, and this book can help you explore them. Try a fresh international twist on a familiar name. Consider names you never even knew existed; you’ll find a wide menu of choices here that have never appeared in any name book before.

      6. Look for a name with meaning. A name’s meaning these days extends far beyond the original ‘spear carrier’ or ‘God СКАЧАТЬ