The Jonathan David Dictionary of First Names

by Rabbi Alfred J Kolatch

The Dictionary of first Names, the culmination of thirty-five years of research in the field of nomenclature, is an invaluable guide for parents-to-be, students of language, and scholars.

Genres: Nonfiction

544 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1980

Reviews

[Melina]

Includes many names and often has accurate meanings but there's also many with elaborate suppositions and contrived etymologies. It does have interesting names but it's definitely not a favorite of my name books.

[Lori Schiele]

This is much more than a "what should we name our baby" book. The author presents more than 10,000 masculine and feminine names as well as personal names and current uses or derivations.
The introduction itself is concerned with the names and their meanings to help the reader use the dictionary to its best possible usage going all the way back to the year 1000 B.C.
It explains where names came from: Old Testament names, Christian names, Nature names, Calendar names, Occupational names, Celebrity names, Unconventional spellings, and Patronymics as well as Matronymics.

not a book to be read straight through (after the introduction) but a great book to skim through ahd learn a lot from.

[Pam]

I have three books on names which I use for genealogy and also for naming my pets, and of them this is my favorite. It is a thick book of 503 pages with the first part dedicated to male names and the second to female. Each entry gives its origins and alternate spellings as well as the meaning or its language roots. In addition it gives examples both of contemporary individuals as well as place name uses.

[Kathleen]

I read this so much as a child it literally fell apart, but it's not the best (or most accurate) name dictionary.