I love this name book and not just because my daughter's name happens to be in it! A great resource for parents looking to choose a creative or gender neutral name. Could even be helpful for a non-binary adult who wants to choose a new name for themselves.

I was so excited to see a baby name book with gender-neutral names, having just selected such a name for my own baby recently! This is, however, just a list of names. I expected a bit more information about the names or history of gendered naming, but it provides very little information about the names. Useful, if a bit disappointing.

I really liked the premise of this book and just didn't think there was any follow through. The names were repetitive and sometimes just obnoxious. It's one thing to say a name is gender-neutral. It's quite another to just say hey, this city could be a name, right? Overall it's a good skim and got me a character name for a Dungeons and Dragons game I'm playing so it wasn't a total waste of time.

This book definitely has a very specific niche who will find it useful. While it offers a range of gender neutral names, the vast majority of them are very trendy and/or unique. Traditional gender neutral names are not included, such as Chris, Jean or Leslie. The names in this book are along the lines of Dakota, Apple, Sparrow, Oleander, Caraway and Blaze.

The pool of names is also pretty small. The entire list of Q names, for instance, is Quama, Qi, Quant, Quasim, Quell, Quill, Quillan, Quimby, Quincy, Quinlan and Quinn. I would really only consider a couple of these real names or good choices for new names, personally, though they are certainly unique. I suppose most of these count as gender neutral because they weren't traditionally used as names at all so there's no association, but I'm not sure Quasim or Quant are great names for either gender, personally. There are a lot of other Q names that I would consider on par with those, though, like Quaid, Quebec, Qiang or Quest. One baby name site I found had 53 Q names listed and most of them were just as gender neutral as the ones in this book.

There are some fun lists of names that are months, cities, foods, etc. Most of them have one or two "real" names in them and the rest are ones that you could use as a name, such as November, Amahoro, Treasure, Branch, Nao, Jitendra, Danube, Peridot, Carbon or Capricorn. Care to name your child after a grain? She suggests Farro, Millet and Teff for some.

Many of these names do seem masculine or feminine to me, but I suppose since they're not officially names to most people the author thinks they count as gender neutral. I don't know that I'd name a son a name like Snow or Indiana, or that I'd name a daughter a name like Umber. Honestly, though, I don't think I'd use most of these names for anybody other than book characters. This would be a good sourcebook for names for that moody teenager and that handsome loner in your short story or romance novel.

If you want a really unusual name, this is probably a good book for you, especially if you like noun, adjective and place names (Poet, Blue, Freedom, Fjord, Fire, Surf, Wrigley, Coriander, Denim, Forever, Elm, Fairfax...). If you want a more traditional name (even a gender neutral one), you might want to look elsewhere.

My rating system:
1 = hated it
2 = it was okay
3 = liked it
4 = really liked it
5 = love it, plan to purchase, and/or would buy it again if it was lost

I read a digital ARC of the book for the purpose of review.

The book has ideas of gender neutral names in it. It would have been better if it had more international names.

As I also enjoy reading non fiction books I decided it was time to read and review another one and chose this baby names book. I remember the whole process of trying to choose names for my children. Sadly, I miscarried my first child, a boy, but I had a boy’s name I liked from the moment I found out I was pregnant. (Though I didn’t find out I was having a boy in advance.) I hadn’t decided on a possible girls name at all! The name I chose was Ryan Michael, though my husband didn’t agree and wanted Ryan Andrew (Andrew being after him!). With my daughter I was dithering not having chosen a name for a boy or girl to begin with. Then when my daughter was born everything seemed to pop into my head and I chose Rachel Marie! The concession for the now ex husband was the spelling of Rachel as he could not remember which way the a and e went in the other spelling! I did buy magazines with lists of baby names in them and I think I bought two baby name books with their meanings too.

Anyway, enough about me! I think you do have to think carefully about choosing a name for a baby. Do you name the baby after a family member? Do you choose a name for its meaning? Or the question that comes with this book. Do you choose a gender-neutral name?? Whatever you decide on you really should think carefully about what you pick. This name needs to suit a baby an then the whole way through this humans life. Can the name be shortened into a nickname you will approve of? Does it go with your surname? Do you give one, two or even three fist names?

What is a gender-neutral name? A name that would equally suit a male or female child. Before reading the book, I sat and thought about any gender-neutral names I could think of. Here’s a few I thought of that I think would fit the “gender-neutral” criteria, Ashleigh, Bailey, Harley, Jamie, Mackenzie, and Parker. I discovered many more gender-neutral names and also nicknames that could be for a boy or girl.

The nicknames I like are Rae which for a man would be spelt Ray. I wanted my daughter to use Rae as a shorter version of her name Rachel but she chose to use Rach. I think whatever name you give a child it will be shortened. Some of these gender-neutral names also have slightly different spellings such as Julian for a boy and Julianne for a girl.

So, I will share some of the listings I discovered in this book that I personally think do work for male/females as well as also being spelt the same: Addison, Ash, Bailey, Blaze, Casey, Jesse, Logan, Morgan, Quinn, Spencer, and Tate.

However, there are other names that work for both sexes but in my opinion are more nicknames such as: Dani, Frankie, Jamie, Joss, Lane, Nicky, Ollie, Ray, Stevie, Tony, and Val. The book also lists, Bernie, Charley, and Sam.

The book goes on to list other names which I would honestly say are “more unusual”, some that celebs have made popular and some that are very old and making a come-back. Examples of Celeb influenced names: Apple, Clove, and Sage. According to the book Chris Martin & Gwyneth Paltrow chose the name Apple, from the well known sentiment of “being apple of our eye”! Sage is both a plant and has the meaning wise.

More modern names could come from your favourite:

Author: Fielding or Blake

Rockstar: Bowie, or Dylan.

Cars: Aston, or Ford

There are many other categories featured in the book such as Trees, Months, Days, Colours, Cities ….it seems that names can come from all sorts of different and unusual things around us every day.

If you are pregnant and want to go down the route of a gender-neutral name then this is the book for you. It has lots of idea’s, whether you choose something from the book or it just gives you inspiration to think of something yourself.

The book does list some names that to be totally honest I would only give to a female or male. I did enjoy discovering the different choices of names and it’s a great book to have a bit of fun with too. I guess like everything else it is an individual choice, just remember your child is the one that has to live with the name you give him or her.

I am really into onomastics so I really wanted to love this book. I have over 50 baby name books that I have read through so I am very familiar with baby name books, however, I found this one to be a letdown. It was nothing but a condensed baby name book with both boy and girl names without all the super fun lists.

Gender-neutral names aren't my thing, but I do help many individuals find the perfect name that do prefer them and have no problem sharing ones that I think would work well for them. However, many of the names in here are not gender neutral. For instance, Asher and Ezra are both masculine names that have been used as a man's name for THOUSANDS of years. While someone may occasionally use a boy name on a girl, if they are not even remotely close in popularity than they are no gender neutral. Those are both top 100 and nearly top 50 boy names but not even in the top 1000s chart for girls, to even really be considered gender neutral I would expect it to be AT LEAST in the top 200 as well. So I'm not sure how super manly names with such a strong history of usage for only males and not for girls is considered gender neutral. Additionally, Everly is one here. Everly is a trendy girl name that was likely derived from Beverly or derived from Ever with the tack-a-lee trend. It depends on the person as to way they started using it. While Beverly was once used for a male, and technically still could be used, it has pretty well shifted to females in the past couple generations. However, Everly has never been used as a male's name (again, perhaps besides the anomalies of boys being named Sophia or girls being named William type of thing). Using straight out boy names either often gives the impression that the parents are sexist and don't find girl names to be strong or that they were set on a boy and never came to terms that they had a girl than a desired boy.

I could appreciate a book that had legitimate gender-neutral names like Taylor, Reese, Kennedy, etc. but this book is really stretching that. Just because a name has been used on the other gender before does not make it classified as such. It needs to be consistently used on both genders. The author really needed to research these names better.

Additionally, some of the statements she made about gender neutral names were erroneous in that they were purely based on her opinion and not at all backed up or based on any real studies conducted. I have researched how various types of names affect people through their lives and gender neutral names are not all rainbows and roses. I have multiple friends with gender neutral names and they despised being Girl Logan in a classroom with other Logans and also felt limited on who they could date since they didn't want to date guys with the same name as them. There are some benefits, but the author seems to add a lot of undocumented ones and remain neutral on the subject. While some may desire to use a gender neutral name, and that is fine, they should have an unbiased opinion on them given in a baby name book and once again, actual gender neutral names. I would have preferred the book be much shorter and actually stay true to the title. The idea for this book is nice and could be executed well, it just seems like the author has a lot of work to do to get it that point.

This book is an awesome contribution to the preparing for baby world. There are barely any resources out there for parents looking for gender neutral names and this book definitely fills that gap. I expect this to be a huge hit and will definitely be recommending it to other parents.

The fact that <i> The Best Gender-Neutral Baby Name Book</i> by Melanie Mannarino exists was a really exciting moment for me. In fact, I was pretty thrilled to have the chance to peruse through one. Now, I do happen to be cisgendered, so I've never personally experienced how it feels to be born in a gender that does not match the gender I feel I have. But I do hope to have children one day and the truth is that it isn't really fair to these children to grow up with a name that they feel misrepresents their gender. And I genuinely find myself interested in the idea of giving any child I might have a gender-neutral name. And so I really enjoyed reading through the names collected within this book. And I would love to see more of them out there in the future.

One of the best things about this book is that it was inclusive, pulling names from various cultures in order to offer a wider variety of names to those who want to give their children the opportunity to have a name that doesn't conform to a specific gender. And, I think, as a writer, this book is an amazing opportunity for choosing character names. And for that, I cannot help being incredibly happy to have gotten a chance to give this book a read through.

For the most part, I think <i>The Best Gender-Neutral Baby Names</i> was pretty useful overall. I really enjoyed seeing names that I wouldn't have ordinarily considered gender-neutral. There were, admittedly, a few that I didn't feel really fit as I generally see them with a specific gender, however overall I was really impressed with the collection. I do have to admit, though, that I wasn't overly fond of all the names that were based on states like Dakota and Tennessee.

<i>I was provided a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.</i>

The Best Gender-Neutral Baby Name Book by author Melanie Mannarino is a fun and useful book for parents to be! I loved reading through the names and meanings of these and would absolutely recommend this one for parents and family!
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an arc copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.