Nameberry
Nameberry Sources
by Pamela Redmond
Nameberry, the world's largest website devoted to names, is based on ten bestselling books of names I wrote with Linda Rosenkrantz, starting in 1988. Linda and I created Nameberry with CTO Hugh Hunter in 2008.
Widely recognized as the world’s leading experts on names, Linda and I transformed the culture of baby naming. We were the first authors to organize names into qualitative lists, the first to make lists of popular names and famous names, the first to relate the concepts of style, image, gender identity, and tradition to naming choices and practices.
Our name books and other work are the primary source for the name origins, meanings, cultural associations, and information on Nameberry. They are, as published in the US:
Our Name Books
Beyond Jennifer & Jason, St. Martin’s Griffin, 1988
Beyond Jennifer & Jason, Madison & Montana, (update of Beyond Jennifer & Jason), St. Martin’s Griffin, 2004
The Baby Name Bible, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007
Baby Names Now, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002
Beyond Sarah & Sam: An Enlightened Guide to Jewish Baby Names, St. Martin’s Griffin, 1992
Beyond Charles & Diana: An Anglophile’s Guide to Baby Naming, St. Martin’s Griffin, 1992
Beyond Shannon & Sean: An Enlightened Guide to Irish Baby Naming, St. Martin’s Griffin ,1992
Cool Names for Babies, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2003
Cool Irish Names for Babies, St. Martin’s Griffin,
Beyond Ava & Aiden, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2009
Several of these books were published in slightly different form in the UK. They are:
The Brilliant Book of Baby Names, Harper Collins UK, 2007
Cool Names for Babies, Harper Collins UK, 2006
Cool Irish Names for Babies, Harper Collins UK, 2011
Sources for our books
Our books were originally sourced and cross-referenced from a wide range of primary material, including books, etymological research, and scholarly studies. We studied and learned from the masters, then reinvented their work to create the world of baby naming today.
Our work set the style for many baby name books and websites that came after, until it was hard to tell the original from the imitation. That’s why, in the age of AI, we’re reinventing baby names again in a way that AI can’t. We draw from our decades of deep knowledge, research, innovation, information, and data to recreate baby names for the age of AI.
We are the original source for our new tools and innovations. No one else knows as much about names as we do, has as much experience in the field, or has done as much original work as the Nameberry creators and team.
Our foundational work on names on which everything else rests was drawn from a wide range of sources. These include:
History of Christian Names, Charlotte M. Yonge, Macmillan, 1884
The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, E. G. Withycombe, Oxford University Press, 1945
The Oxford Dictionary of First Names, Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges, Oxford University Press, 1990
What Shall We Name the Baby?, Winthrop Ames, Simon & Schuster, 1935
Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Names, K.M. Sheard, Llewellyn Publications, 2011
The Oxford Dictionary of English Surnames, P.H. Reaney, Oxford University Press, 1958
The Penguin Dictionary of Surnames, Basil Cottle, Penguin Books, 1967
Il Grande Libro dei Nomi, Laura Tuan, De Vecchi Editore, 1987
Il Nuovo Libro dei Nomi, Elena Benaglia, De Vecchi Editore, 1992
The First Name Reverse Dictionary, Yvonne Navarro, McFarland, 1993
Christian Names in Local and Family History, George Redmonds, Dundurn Press, 2004
The Language of Names, Justin Kaplan and Anne Bernays, Simon & Schuster, 1997
A Matter of Taste: How Names, Fashions, and Culture Change, Stanley Lieberson, Yale University Press, 2000
The Means of Naming: A social and cultural history of personal naming in western Europe,
Stephen Wilson, UCL Press, 1998
The Name Game, Christopher P. Andersen, Simon & Schuster, 1977
Nameberry Sources and Friends
In the years since we launched Nameberry, the name experts who write and edit Nameberry, including Sophie Kihm, Clare Green, Grace Royal, Emma Waterhouse, Bryn McKeon, Madison Dresler, and Owen Satran, have consulted the following informative and reliable sources for information on names:
Social Security Administration
UK Office for National Statistics
Irish Baby Names Central Statistics Office
Names: A Journal of Onomastics
Other sites we loved and worked with that are no longer with us include:
British Baby Names
You Can't Call It It