Beyond Shannon and Sean: An Enlightened Guide to Irish Baby Naming

by Linda Rosenkrantz

Book Overview

Whether you're of Irish descent, or simply enjoy the sound of Sinead or Finnegan, this excellent source of Irish names features chapters such as Beyond Ryan & Murphy, Conan, Patron Saint of Barbarians, and names from the literature of James Joyce.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312069057
• ISBN13: 9780312069056
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Has Minor Flaws But I Love it Anyawy!

I have Irish ancestry and I absolutely love Irish names and I bought this book and despite the lack of pronunciations and the few pronunciations they give being questionable I still love this book and all the cool catagories and lists that are so much fun to read and this is definitely my absolute favorite baby name book!I have found a lot of great boy and girl names that are so different then the typical popular names like Brian, Ryan, Kevin, Shannon, Kelly, Erin, etc, and I highly recommend this cool book!The book has very minor flaws but I love it anyway and give it five stars for everything that is right about this book!

Very useful despite minor flaws

This book is much better than you would gather from reading the reviews. Although it's true, the pronunciations are not always correct, the book is an excellent source of interesting Irish names. There's also a section of names that are not used in Ireland for humans but which might appeal to people looking for an Irish-sounding name. The book also offers some historical perspectives not in other naming books.Since Irish is a tough language to pronounce merely by looking at Irish words, it might be a good idea to get a brief overview of the language before wading through the names. It'll help with pronunciation. If you can't be bothered (who has the time?!), just double-check a name you like with a more official Irish source. That's what I do & it's no big deal. I really like the way the book is organized and I enjoy the extra info so it's well worth the price I paid for it, despite its few flaws.This pair of authors has several other charming naming books. If you're a writer (or a pretender, like me), their little books are very handy.

Light naming

If you like picking names by feel, apparent popularity, or general connotations, then this is a nice book for Irish names. If you like more details on pronunciation and history, you will need to look elsewhere.

This book is the greatest!

This is the best of the Irish baby-naming books. It's lots of fun and gives all kinds of information you can't find anywhere else, from the origins of family names to hundreds of names not found in any other books. We loved it!

Absolutely the best reference for Irish & Celtic names

My wife and I found this gem of a book after much hand wringing and searching of other better known baby name books. It provides a treasure of Irish and Celtic names new and old. It explains how these names came in and out of vogue. We found no other book that dealt so well with the Irish names. We have loaned it so many times that we needed a new copy.