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I wish there was a single reference book for given names from around the world, but I haven't been able to find one. I have a couple of books on my shelves that have been quite helpful: Concise Di...
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#3: Attribution notice added
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/832 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
I wish there was a single reference book for given names from around the world, but I haven't been able to find one. I have a couple of books on my shelves that have been quite helpful: Concise Dictionary of First Names (OUP)[http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780198662594.do](http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780198662594.do) African Ethnics and Personal Names (Ariko) [new user, so I can only post one link - google it!] There are a lot of 'baby naming' websites out there; they tend to be pretty poor quality and unhelpful, but others may have better luck. As for fantasy names, Tolkien was a linguist (or 'philologist' as they said then), and the reason there is such a strong consistency in the names is that they are part of languages he not only spent a long time on, but applied his knowledge of real languages to them. You can tell when people have taken short cuts.