Book Review: The Catholic Baby Name Book

I don't know if this is the case with most parents, but I always find naming my baby to be a weighty task.  Here you are charged with naming a person for the rest of his or her life and that's no small matter.  When my husband and I are picking out names for our children we are looking for names that are family names and names of saints.  We like family names because they give our children a connection to their lineage and saint names because we want them to have a patron saint as a holy example to follow.

I didn't exactly rely on baby name books with my first three children.  Between having a great selection of female family names and wonderful corresponding patron saints for those names, we really didn't have to fret too much over the names for the girls.  But, throw a boy into the mix and you get one set of stumped parents, especially when most names we like wind up with initials that spell things that aren't exactly monograms you'd want your child to shoulder for life.

So when it came to naming Anthony, we needed a bit of naming help so I turned to The Catholic Baby Name Book.  This book offered thousands of baby name suggestions.   So we took our lists of names we were considering and then browsed through this book to see if there were any other names we liked better or would work as a middle name.  Then I took a look to see which saints were associated with the names we liked as well as what each name means.  Ultimately, we ended up sticking with the names we were originally considering, but it was nice to learn a little bit more about the names we were choosing for our son.

These days there are all sorts of "trendy" names out there that have no real meaning and that can muddy the waters a bit if you're hoping to find a name for your child that is complimentary to your faith.  So with that in mind, this book is nice because you may find that the trendy name you're considering, if you go that route, actually has a connection to a saint.  That was the case with my godson's name.  There isn't a St. Miles, but when we looked up his name in this book we found that his name is actually derived from Milles and there is a St. Miles from the 4th century A.D.

So I guess the bottom line here is this:  If you need help coming up with a baby name, or you want to find a name for your baby that is relevant to the Catholic faith, then this is a good pick.

I was provided with a copy of The Catholic Baby Name Book by the publisher, Ave Maria Press, in exchange for my honest review.   Visit Ave Maria Press for more information on this book.  You can also purchase a copy of this book by visiting Amazon.com.