If you?re wondering why I still keep this book dog-eared on my desk I will tell you now. If you?re not interested, just skip to the end, and vote. This little book is a treasure trove of names for the scores of characters that appear in my short fiction and poems who all need unique names. The Internet has plenty of baby name sites, but this book is a lot easier than scrolling through page after page on a cranky web site that flashes annoying ads the whole time. Get this book if you're thinking of having kids, or perhaps need some help picking a nice name for that delightful mother-in-law character in your first novel. The book also comes in handy for naming pets. We have a cat named Ben, and a dog named Jack. If we ever get a fish tank, I?ll flip to the index, and start naming away.
Plus: it reads amazingly easily - as opposed to 99% of other books I ploughed through, which became a chore.
One weakness: names from other cultural backgrounds. While these are included - and not just as politically correct oddities, but as valid and even "hip" choices - I question where they were drawn from or how chosen for inclusion. As a native German speaker, I was very interested to see the German list. Given that it was, as can be expected, small (for more extensive lists I would logically look elsewhere than this type of book)I was surprised at how many names were inlcluded that I had never heard of before - much less known anyone of that name. If the German list was so skewed, I would assume that other language groups were as well.
