Name Resources
The reference works, databases, pronunciation tools, and academic research behind every name on this site. Where sources disagree, we present both the scholarly and the popular reading.
Scholarly Dictionaries
The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland — Hanks, Coates, McClure (2016). The most comprehensive scholarly dictionary of British and Irish family names, covering over 45,000 surnames with full linguistic analysis across four volumes.
A Dictionary of First Names — Hanks, Hardcastle, Hodges (2006). Academic dictionary of given names with meanings, language origins, variants, and cognates.
A Dictionary of Surnames — Hanks, Hodges (1988). Scholarly surname dictionary covering 45,000+ entries with etymology codes and variant forms.
A Dictionary of English Surnames — Reaney, Wilson (1991). The standard academic reference for English surnames, with approximately 40,000 spelling variants across 13,000+ entries.
A World of Baby Names — Norman (2003). Over 12,000 given names with meanings, pronunciations, and cultural contexts from traditions worldwide.
Best Baby Names 2021 — Thomas (2020). Nearly 7,000 given names with meanings, pronunciations, and alternative spellings.
Classic Biblical Baby Names — Tropea (2006). Biblical names with meanings, language origins, and background context from scripture.
Inspired Baby Names from Around the World — Shane (2015). Over 6,000 names with strong coverage of Muslim, African, and global cultural traditions.
Modern Baby Names for a New India — Swarup (2012). The primary reference for Indian and Sanskrit names, covering over 4,000 entries.
The Complete Dictionary of English and Hebrew First Names — Kolatch (2005). Comprehensive reference for Hebrew name meanings and English-Hebrew equivalents.
Reference Collections
100,000+ Baby Names — Lansky (2019). The largest single etymology source in our research, covering over 50,000 given name entries.
75,000+ Baby Names for the 21st Century — Cooper (2001). Over 11,000 names with meanings, origins, and variant forms.
The Everything Baby Names Book — Rifkin (2011). Over 11,000 entries with meanings, language origins, and notable bearers.
The Penguin Book of Baby Names — Pickering (2009). Scholarly approach to given names with compound etymologies and linguistic analysis.
General Reference
7000 Baby Names: Classic and Modern — Spence (2001). Given name reference with cross-references between name variants.
10,000 Baby Names — Ivins (2010). Broad-coverage name reference with meanings and language origins.
The Best Baby Names in the World — Congemi (2004). Strong coverage of African names and names from global cultural traditions.
Biblical Baby Names for Today — Lester (2008). Biblical names with scripture references and Hebrew language origins.
Online Resources
BehindTheName.com — A comprehensive online database of given name and surname etymologies. We reference BehindTheName for names not covered by our print sources.
Pronunciation Resources
Forvo.com — The largest pronunciation dictionary, with over six million recordings by native speakers across 430 languages. We link to Forvo from our pronunciation editor so you can hear how a name sounds before confirming the Japanese translation.
HowToPronounce.com — A community-driven pronunciation database covering 89 languages, with a dedicated names section that includes meanings, origins, and audio recordings by native speakers.
Japanese Language Data
EDRDG Dictionaries — Name and dictionary data from the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group (JMnedict, JMdict, KANJIDIC2). These databases verify Japanese kanji compounds — confirming that a kanji combination is a recognized Japanese word or name. Jisho.org provides a user-friendly interface to these dictionaries.
Jeffrey's Japanese-English Dictionary — Originally created by Jeffrey Friedl in 1994, maintained by William F. Maton Sotomayor from 1999 to 2022, and hosted by Takase Studios since 2007. We use this dictionary to verify that kanji compounds are authentic Japanese words and names.
Academic Research
Crawling English-Japanese Person-Name Transliterations from the Web — Sato (2009). Frequency data on how English names are transliterated into Japanese katakana, helping determine the most widely used transliteration for each name. KAKENHI grant 21300094.
Name Ranking Data
Forenames and Surnames with Gender and Country — Over 12 million forenames and 21 million surnames across 106 countries, with gender and frequency counts. This dataset provides the ranking and demographic data that appears on every name page. Published under the Apache 2.0 license.
Government Census Data — Name frequency and gender distribution data compiled from government census agencies in over a dozen countries, including the United States (Social Security Administration, Census Bureau), United Kingdom (ONS), France (INSEE), Spain (INE), Sweden (SCB), Brazil (IBGE), and others. Famous person information verified against Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).