John Denver’s Real Name Is Henry John Deutschendorf Jr ?!?!? (babynames.com)

Member Name: splodgethecat

Product:	babynames.com
Date:	18/08/01 (753 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Hundreds of baby names, Lots of other useful site features, Quick to load, easy navigation

Disadvantages: Photographers directory US based

Babynames.com is not the sort of website I would regularly visit as mine and my daughter’s baby making days are over ... well, mine are at least, and the grandkids are not yet old enough to be contemplating taking that massive step into the great unknown. However, a neighbour *is* due to give birth at any moment, and she asked me to a bit of research into baby names for her. At present she and her partner are at such a loss as to what to name the child that they are starting to consider names of family elders, Elaine or Alan. Now, I‘ve nothing against the names Elaine or Alan, you understand, and both are lovely people, but I feel it’s such a shame the younger couple have so little imagination when there are so many gorgeous, not to mention unusual names to chose from these days.

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In my day you had Doris, Mona, Ethel, Elizabeth, Harry, Claude, Alfred or Bill and other such names, which these days really date you and give people a clue to what era you belong. However, going back to my young neighbours; Having access to the net I offered to do some searching for them which I thought would be fun and this is how I came across babynames.com.

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Here are listed literally hundreds of names for both sexes along with their meanings and origins. Which is a really good idea I feel, because if you are unsure of which names to chose out of a selection, a choice could be made by what the names *mean* for example protector or farmer. Also you might want a name with a Celtic background, for instance, so these are easy to find here. How about some of these for lovely and unusual names;

Ramiro - which means supreme judge and is of Portuguese origin,

Gallia - meaning wherewithall or gall and has Celtic or Gaelic connections,

Safara - which means her place and is an African name,

or even

Amir - meaning from the top of the tree and which has Persian origins

How wonder
ful these names are! The listing is set out from A to Z and there are a large selection under each letter, so it would be very difficult *not* to find something suitable.

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However, there are many other interesting features about this site; it is not only a baby naming service. ‘Grandma Maggie’s’ column is a question and answer ‘ask the expert’ section, whereby Grandma Maggie, a mother of four girls and grandmother to two boys and two girls, answers your childcare problems. She is trained in early childhood education, and was the owner of a successful day care centre, so I would expect you would get excellent advice here should you have a childcare query.

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Name art is a link where you enter your child’s name and the site generates a lovely lettering style that can be printed out and used to decorate baby's room or furniture. Very neat!

There is a site shop too where you can purchase magazines, books (along with reviews and new releases) and gifts for mum and baby online.

There is a guest essay on site, pic of the month, message boards and a photographers directory, which unfortunately is US based. However this doesn’t really matter, 98% of the site is useful to people worldwide, so no great problem there.

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Apart from all this, there are even more features, which are useful as well as being entertaining. For example, most popular names of 2000 and 1999. Listed are the top 50 girls and boys names for those particular years. There is also a really super, and very amusing list of celebrities’ *real* names. You might be interested to know that Chevy Chase’s real name is Cornelius Crane Chase, or that the exotically named Bo Derek was born Mary Cathleen Collins - a bit more down to earth, eh? There‘s quite a few of these listed so worth a look. In addition, there’s also a list of ‘soap’ names, but aga
in, we are talking about US soaps, still, you might find a name here you would like to use.

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My favourite section on the site though, was the Shakespeare names. Here you find a list of names with the plays that they featured in. If you love really uncommon or unusual names, then this is the place you should be searching for your child’s name. Don’t you just love some of the following;

Baptista - Taming of the Shrew

Camillo - Winter's Tale

Gratiano - Merchant of Venice

Paris - Romeo & Juliet

Wonderful. There is, of course, a load more to chose from.

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This site looks really great. It’s very easy to navigate with a menu along the top and the pages load *extremely* quickly. Therefore I was able to print *all* the names from the site in a short space of time for my neighbour. After pouring over the names I think they decided on Saskia for a girl, or Keagan for a boy. Certainly not names *I* would have chosen, however it’s horses for courses isn’t it? I am sure that anyone expecting a child would find this site extremely useful though. I quite enjoyed my stay there and will be interested to find out what they actually call their baby when it’s born; whether they stick with the above choice or change their minds.

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