Post-first viewing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two, my friend Niki and I went to McNally for a peruse. I decided it was time to officially purchase a baby name book, instead of relying on iPod apps and the Internet. There were plenty of name books to choose from, boasting of pages laced with 15,000 choices or unique names or revival of old-timey names reviling the common names of today.
My quality-control technique consisted of me picking up a book, looking up my favourite girl's name and rejecting it on the spot if it wasn't there. Furthermore, I thought, what good is a book with such lucrative "information" as sixteen alternate spellings for a regular ol' name? As someone with an alternatively spelled first name, I find nothing innovative or unique about Wyllyam vs. Wilium vs. WILLIAM. You're only setting your child up for a lifetime of "Actually, it's W-Y-l-l-Y-a-m" and trust me, it's disheartening.
I picked up a lovely looking book called The Baby Name Wizard by Laura Wattenberg, flipped to the girls section and VOILA, there was my girl's name. Instead of a list of weird spellings, this book features categories, elaborated in the book's narrative, detailing the general feeling and impression of the name, nicknames, suggestions for sibling names, meaning if pertinent and other social-historical contexts. Each name also includes a graph detailing when -if ever- the name was most popular.
It must hold some clout; I looked up one of my sister's names and among the sibling suggestions was my name! Needless to say, I bought the book and immediately started researching potential names. Narrowing down choices might be more difficult than I initially thought!
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