Ebook Baby Names

[Custodio Groves]

Thisgreat collection of first names will help you to find the right one for your baby.

More than 1200 inspirational ideas for boys and girls, both classic and modern, are listed alphabetically with their fascinating meanings and origins explained.

Pick one that has significance for your family, one that goes well with your surname, or simply one that you like.

Baby Names makes choosing a name easy and fun!

Every year, hundreds of thousands of expectant parents turn to The Complete Book of Baby Names as their essential, indispensable guide to choosing the best name for their child. Helpful and full of creative inspiration, this #1 bestseller gives you all the best ways to find your favorites and decide on the perfect fit.

Intellectual, creative names from literature and the arts

Strong, respected names from sports and politics

Unique, under-the-radar names that hit the right notes

Packed full of more than 100,001 baby names with origins, variations, and richer definitions, The Complete Book of Baby Names makes choosing your baby's name a joyful act of love.

"If you've got an occasion to bestow a name, and you're looking for the widest possible range of choices,

you can't go wrong by bringing home a copy of The Complete Book of Baby Names."

phantomscribbler.blogspot.com

"The Complete Book of Baby Names is a great resource if you are naming a baby, and, it's also an interesting read. Busy Girl has been using it to inform all her friends what their names mean.Most importantly, though, it covers what NOT to name your baby. I'll let you check that one out yourself."

BusyMom.net

"Since this is my third child, I've been through my share of baby name books, about 2 a pregnancy. This one I found as my favorite, not just the first few chapters but the list of names are wonderful and broken not just into boy and girl categories but lists of popular names by country, twin names and hordes of other lists. You'll be amazed, as I was."

snowboundintheyukon.blogspot.com

"If you're going to choose one baby name book and get the most bang for your buck, this is a good one to go with. It's more complete and helpful than any other single book I've seen out there and short of turning it into an OED-style multi-volume set, I'm not sure there's much more the author Lesley Bolton could pack in."

daringyoungmom.com

"The Complete Book of Baby Names is so fun too. It isn't just a list of names - it is like a course in baby-naming! With chapters on baby-naming history, naming trends, the attributes of a perfect name, middles names, etc. as well as 276 fun name lists like popular names in different countries, and bizarre lists such as the names of models, First Ladies, Reality TV Stars and more, this book could keep me going until I deliver!"

5minutesformom.com

"We've seen a lot of baby name books in our time, some good, and some not so good. This one's a good one...It has the big list, so that you can look up the definitions of the names that you're considering. But, it also teaches you how to pick a really great name for your little bundle of joy... So, if you just want definitions, this book's got those. If you just don't know what name you want, or if you're scared of choosing the wrong name, this book can help."

thefamilylog.com

Credits: Produced by Meredith Bach, Asad Razzaki and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at (This

file was produced from images generously made available

by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

Over a quarter of a century ago, while engaged inintroducing the American public school system intoJapan, I became acquainted in Tokio with Mrs. MatildaChaplin Ayrton, the author of "Child-Life in Japan."This highly accomplished lady was a graduate of EdinburghUniversity, and had obtained the degrees ofBachelor of Letters and Bachelor of Sciences, besidesstudying medicine in Paris. She had married ProfessorWilliam Edward Ayrton, the electric engineer and inventor,then connected with the Imperial College ofEngineering of Japan, and since president of the Instituteof Electric Engineers in London. She took a keeninterest in the Japanese people and never wearied ofstudying them and their beautiful country. With mysister, she made excursions to some of the many famousplaces in the wonderful city of Tokio. When her ownlittle daughter, born among the camellias and chrysanthemums,grew up under her Japanese nurse, Mrs.Ayrton became more and more interested in the homelife of the Japanese and in the pictures and storieswhich delighted the children of the Mikado's Empire.After her return to England, in 1879, she wrote thisbook.

In the original work, the money and distances, thecomparisons and illustrations, were naturally English,and not American. For this reason, I have ventured[Pg vi]to alter the text slightly here and there, that the Americanchild reader may more clearly catch the drift ofthe thought, have given to each Japanese word thestandard spelling now preferred by scholars and omittedstatements of fact which were once, but are no longer,true. I have also translated or omitted hard Japanesewords, shortened long sentences, rearranged the illustrations,and added notes which will make the subjectclearer. Although railways, telegraphs, and steamships,clothes and architecture, schools and customs, patternedmore or less closely after those in fashion in Americaand Europe, have altered many things in Japan andcaused others to disappear, yet the children's world oftoys and games and stories does not change very fast.In the main, it may be said, we have here a true pictureof the old Japan which we all delighted in seeing, when,in those sunny days, we lived in sight of Yedo Bay andFuji Yama, with Japanese boys and girls all around us.

The best portions and all the pictures of Mrs. Ayrton'sbig and costly book have been retained and reproduced,including her own preface or introduction, andthe book is again set forth with a hearty "ohio" (goodmorning) of salutation and sincere "omdto" (congratulations)that the nations of the world are rapidly becomingone family. May every reader of "Child-Life inJapan" see, sometime during the twentieth century, thecountry and the people of whom Mrs. Ayrton has writtenwith such lively spirit and such warm appreciation.

In almost every home are Japanese fans, in ourshops Japanese dolls and balls and other knick-knacks,on our writing-tables bronze crabs or lacqueredpen-tray with outlined on it the extinctvolcano [Fuji San][1] that is the most strikingmountain seen from the capital of Japan. Atmany places of amusement Japanese houses ofreal size have been exhibited, and the jargon offashion for "Japanese Art" even reaches ourchildren's ears.

Yet all these things seem dull and lifeless whenthus severed from the quaint cheeriness of theirtrue home. To those familiar with Japan, thatbamboo fan-handle recalls its graceful grassy tree,the thousand and one daily purposes for whichbamboo wood serves. We see the open shopwhere squat the brown-faced artisans cleverlydividing into those slender divisions the fan-handle,[Pg xii]the wood-block engraver's where somedozen men sit patiently chipping at their cherry-woodblocks, and the printer's where the coloringarrangements seem so simple to those used towestern machinery, but where the colors are sorich and true. We see the picture stuck on thefan frame with starch paste, and drying in thebrilliant summer sunlight. The designs recallvividly the life around, whether that life be thestage, the home, insects, birds, or flowers. Wethink of halts at wayside inns, when bowing tea-housegirls at once proffer these fans to hot andtired guests.

The tonsured oblique-eyed doll suggests thefestival of similarly oblique-eyed little girls on the3rd of March. Then dolls of every degree obtainfor a day "Dolls' Rights." In every Japanesehousehold all the dolls of the present and previousgenerations are, on that festival, set out tobest advantage. Beside them are sweets, green-speckledrice cake, and daintily gilt and lacquereddolls' utensils. For some time previous, to meetthe increased demand, the doll shopman has beenvery busy. He sits before a straw-holder intowhich he can readily stick, to dry, the woodensupports of the plaster dolls' heads he is painting,as he takes first one and then another to giveartistic touches to their glowing cheeks or littletongue. That dolly that seems but "so odd" to[Pg xiii]Polly or Maggie is there the cherished darling ofits little owner. It passes half its day tied on toher back, peeping companionably its head overher shoulder. At night it is lovingly shelteredunder the green mosquito curtains, and providedwith a toy wooden pillow.

The expression "Japanese Art" seems but acreated word expressing either the imitations of it,or the artificial transplanting of Japanese thingsto our houses. The whole glory of art in Japanis, that it is not Art, but Nature simply rendered,by a people with a fancy and love of fun quiteIrish in character. Just as Greek sculptureswere good, because in those days artists modelledthe corsetless life around them, so the Japaneseartist does not draw well his lightly draped figures,cranes, and insects because these thingsstrike him as beautiful, but because he is familiarwith their every action.

The Japanese house out of Japan seems but adull and listless affair. We miss the idle, easy-goinglife and chatter, the tea, the sweetmeats,the pipes and charcoal brazier, the clogs awaitingtheir wearers on the large flat stone at the entry,the grotesquely trained ferns, the glass balls andornaments tinkling in the breeze, that hang, aswell as lanterns, from the eaves, the garden withtiny pond and goldfish, bridge and miniature hill,the bright sunshine beyond the sharp shadow of[Pg xiv]the upward curving angles of the tiled roof, thegay, scarlet folds of the women's under-dresspeeping out, their little litter of embroidery ormending, and the babies, brown and half naked,scrambling about so happily. For, what has ababy to be miserable about in a land where it isscarcely ever slapped, where its clothing, alwaysloose, is yet warm in winter, where it basks freelyin air and sunshine? It lives in a house, thatfrom its thick grass mats, its absence of furniture,and therefore of commands "not to touch," is thevery beau-ideal of an infant's playground.

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