Parenting Excerpts

The New Age Baby Name Book by Sue Browder
Reprinted with permission by Workman Press.

Naming your baby should be one of the happiest experiences of your entire pregnancy. Now’s the time to kick off your shoes, settle into a cozy chair or warm bath with a cup of herbal tea, and let your imagination flow. If your baby is a girl, do you want a cheerful-sounding name like Merry or Holly? Or would something more serious, like Allison or Reagan, sound better? Should your son be named after a relative? Or would you rather he have a name that’s distinctly his? Ichabod is definitely out; but what about Jordan, Michael or Taylor? Close your eyes, relax, and daydream for twenty minutes about your new baby. Who do you imagine she’ll look like? What day do you think he’ll be born? The possibilities for names are endless.

Of course, you’ll have countless questions….What unspoken message can you send with a name? Which common myths should you ignore? How soon will your baby know her own name?

Why is this called the “New Age” Baby Name Book? When this book was first written in the early 1970’s, I was pregnant and my husband and I were wondering what to name our own baby. Yet all the baby name books at the time contained only names we’ve all heard a thousand times…We wanted a name that would be a little less common. Something unique and trendy, yet also meaningful. A name with a bit of flair.

We wanted the name to contain a lovely hidden meaning, but we also wanted it to sound melodic….That’s when I began collecting the most musical names I could find from all over the world.

Every culture has its rhythms. Every name has its music. The names in this book were chosen mostly for their music…

When choosing a name for my baby, I believed it important to consider all the traditional favorites like Sarah, Matthew and John. But whenever I came across one of these timeless classics, I always tried to find something extra-special about it. Sometimes I came upon a piece of hidden “magic” in a name, such as an unusual mythological or spiritual meaning. Other times I’d find that a traditional name had a fascinating legend buried deep in its history. My personal interest quickly grew into a passion, and before long I had enough names for a book.

I finally called my new baby Erin Kimberly Browder. But what should I call the book? At the time, many people believed that we were approaching a “New Age” – a time when prejudice and fear would at last melt away and people of all races, nationalities and creeds would live side by side in mutual respect, understanding and peace. I realized that, symbolically, the names I’d collected were already reflecting this harmonious New Age…The dream of a day when all children would live together without prejudice or fear seemed a lovely idea to reflect in a book about babies, who are always our best hope for the future. Thus “The New Age Baby Name Book” was born.

That peaceful New Age envisioned years ago still hasn’t arrived, of course. Many would say we’re far from it. But as the Internet connects millions of us daily with people all over the world, the dream is alive in ways it never has been before.

In a very real way, the names we choose for our babies reflect how we feel about ourselves. When our identities as a people shift, so do the names we prefer…

Meanwhile, in this country we’ve witnessed an explosion of new names that were unheard of just a few decades ago. Names like Chanda, Kaylee, Lakeisha, Richelle, and Tiana for girls; and Deston, Jerone, Jalen, Teryl and Tevin for boys, have all recently been coined by imaginative American parents. Gender-free names like Blair, Cameron, Cassidy, Jordan, Mackenzie, Payton and Taylor are also becoming quite trendy. As we reinvent ourselves, often the names that worked so well in the past no longer seem just right – so we find new ones.

This revised, better-than-ever third edition of “The New Age Baby Name Book” has been greatly expanded to include thousands of new names from all over the world, including many created by inventive American parents. Yet even as this book continues to grow (with an additional 10,000 names), its unifying vision remains the same. This collection of richly meaningful names are still the best ones I could find for the continuing advent of the New Age.

As Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist James Agee once said, “In every child who is born, under no matter what circumstances and of no matter what parents, the potentiality of the human race is born again.”

Have a delightful time choosing a special name for your baby!

You can view/purchase a copy of “The New Age Baby Name Book” here.

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