A Dictionary of First Names (Oxford Paperback Reference)

Oxford Dictionary of First Names

I have both of the books discussed by the other reviewers here, "A Concise Dictionary of First Names", 1992 ed, ISBN 0198661908, and "Oxford Dictionary of First Names", 2006 ed, ISBN 978-0198610601. Contrary to what the other reviewer stated, the Concise book (240 pages) is NOT a subset of the larger Oxford book on first names (which stops numbering pages after 285, but is close to 400 pages). In the acknowledgements section at the front of the Concise book, the authors even state that SOME of the names came from the larger Oxford book, but not all. My daughter and I sat down with both books and picked off ten names from the Concise book and looked for them in the larger Oxford book. Of those ten, these three were not there (or in the case of Justus, were considerably shortened):

Redmond, an Irish Gaelic form of Raymond
Mihangel, Welsh form of Michael (we eventually found this hidden in the Appendix)
Justus, Latin name taken from surnames in Germany and Netherlands (the Oxford book has an abbreviated version of the origins of this name)

So, the Concise book has names in it that are not in the larger Oxford edition and, from what I can tell, many of them are of Irish or British descent. Since I'm half Irish, that's pretty important to me. There are names of neighbors, family friends, and other relatives that I'd like to see in a baby name book and they're in the Concise version, but not in the Oxford. I have both and have found them indispensable.

If you're looking for really bizarre names, as in Hollywood flavor-of-the-week names, this book doesn't have them.

If you're looking for Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Indian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Scandinavian, Scottish, Spanish, and Welsh names each in their own section in the Appendix, then you're in luck, because this book DOES have them.

One thing that bothered me considerably about this book was that different spellings of the same name are lumped together under one spelling or possibly two, but not ALL of the various spellings, so you can quite easily miss the name you're actually looking for. For that, I knocked off a star. The other thing that bothered me about this book was that all of those names in the appendices that are supposed to be native to one language actually cross several, and yet they appear only in the appendices and not in the first part of the book, the alphabetical listings. So again, it's quite easy to miss the name you're looking for. For that, I knocked off another star.

If Oxford had listed every name in this book in one long alphabetical listing, I would have given this book five stars. But, since there are so many places to look to find what you're actually looking for, I just can't give it that high of a rating. I had to hunt and peck to find names I already knew. That's a real hindrance. Another thing I noticed was that some of the origins in here are shortened from other books. I LIKE the long histories. I'd like to see the story behind a name. For that reason, and the alphabetical listings, I usually pick up the Concise book before this one.

The Concise book can be found here, A Concise Dictionary of First Names

Every entry is identical. Tells you nothing of interest. The one thing you want to know, what the name means, is hard to find, if it's mentioned at all. Very disappointing.

I have often found need for this book. It gives detailed etymologies of names, of famous persons bearing the name, and cross-references different forms of the name (as nick, male/female, and other languages). A name book done up as a proper reference book. It also has sections on Hindi/Indian and Muslim/Arabic names.

Head and shoulders above all other name books I have seen. Well researched and extremely thorough.