The Catholic Baby Name Book Paperback – May 6, 2013

I think there were a lot of creative names. Some of the names, such as Sexburga (for a girl), are not common and maybe a little odd but they may be useful as middle names. Some of the different names may also be used by parents' who want unique names for their children or, at least, will not be scared off by different names for their children. Names may become more appealing to people if they enjoy the short biographies that go along with them. Also, the book allows people to see if names they are considering are Catholic names.

This book offers an impressive list of Catholic Saints' names, but as a baby name book it frustrates, all the weird anachronistic names are very distracting. I wish the editors had a section with names that are more normal and useful in the modern world. Many pages have no names I would ever consider. here are three real examples of names in this list of 10,000:JarogniewHerculaflusFlawinszIn the back of the book is a list of the top 100 most popular boy and girl Catholic names, if that section extended to 400 or 500 I would find it much more useful, but as it is, reading this book is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

As a first time Catholic mom, I was so excited to order this book and even more excited to see when it arrived that it was no skinny baby name book- this work was substantial! I knew that I wanted a biblical or saint's name for our child and this was looking to be a perfect resource. After reading through the 'A' section for boys, I was disappointed to already be weary! This feeling was confirmed by the time I reached the end of section 'C'. While the author has done a fantastic and comprehensive job in her research, so many of these names are far fetched and not true contenders, ie names like Abibus, Abilius, Abuna, Abundius, Acepsimas...come on! The name Acharius tells me that this name means ungrateful- why would I want to give my child a name that means ungrateful?! Aside from the far fetched names, the alternate spellings (that are also mostly far fetched) appear in the main listing and along with their more familiar version. My conclusion is that while I appreciate being thorough, this book has too many listings that are not practical and could easily be half its volume.

"The Catholic Baby Name Book" by Patrice Fagnant-MacArthur arrived on my doorstep just in the nick of time! This carefully researched and extremely thorough resource is going into the baby shower gift bags of two friends who are struggling to come up with meaningful and timely names. So many of the names are beautiful, it gave me just the slightest inkling of wanting to have more children in order to use the book myself! :) If you or someone you know is looking for a wonderful gift, a resource to finding a name rooted in faith and culture, or a way to spark discussion, this is the book. I highly recommend it!

90% if not more of the names are extremely obscure. I was hoping for creative names or nicknames tied to saints that were reasonable for pronunciation and the 21st century but that is not the case with this book. The book also goes into many bizarre spellings of names. Overall, it was just unhelpful for the actual naming of children.

Love this book, we were having a terrible time coming up with a name for our son and ended up choosing his name from this book! I wish there was a little more information about each of the names, but I love how they include the stories of the saints behind the names.

Many of the names listed are very ancient souning, but overall a good book to reference.

I so wanted to love this book. When looking for the name of our little one, we decided to opt for Catholic or Biblical names. Within moments of opening this book, I regretted the purchase. Some of the names in here date back to the third century and no parent would ever bestow such monikers on their children. Lots of these are silly or outdated. There is more of an emphasis on ancient saint names than realistic options and I was totally disappointed.

Disappointing, not really what it says on the tin at all. Features an A-Z of ancient saints names, most of which are a bit 'off the wall' for naming a child, and the volume of names it suggests is simply due to the excessive number of variations of each name that it lists. To top it off, it features the top 100 American baby names from years gone by so it's not really orientated to the British market at all. There are much better books than this out there. If I'd opened it in a book shop I would never have bought it.

Good book

You can find there a perfect and holy name for your child (also in other languages). Recommened to all Catholics and Christians :-)

Good