''A Dictionary of First Names'' is an

onomastic Onomastics (or onomatology in older texts) is the study of proper names, including their etymology, history, and use. An ''alethonym'' ('true name') or an ''orthonym'' ('real name') is the proper name of the object in question, the object of onom ...

work of reference on

given name A given name (also known as a forename or first name) is the part of a personal name quoted in that identifies a person, potentially with a middle name as well, and differentiates that person from the other members of a group (typically a f ...

s, published by

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, edited by

Patrick Hanks Patrick Wyndham Hanks (24 March 1940 – 1 February 2024) was an English lexicographer, corpus linguist, and onomastician. He edited dictionaries of general language, as well as dictionaries of personal names. Background Hanks was educated a ...

, Kate Hardcastle, and Flavia Hodges in 1990 and 2006. The second edition of 2006 (as paperback 2007) discusses a total of "over 6,000 names". An abbreviated version, ''A Concise Dictionary of First Names'' was published by Oxford Paperback Reference in 1992, and an even more concise "Oxford minireference" version entitled ''Babies' Names'' in 1995. An online version is available to paying subscribers a
oxfordreference.com
The same editors also published ''A Dictionary of Surnames '' with OUP in 1988.

References

*Patrick Hanks, Kate Hardcastle, and Flavia Hodges, ''A Dictionary of First Names'' (2nd ed.), Oxford University Press (2006) . Dictionaries by subject Publications established in 1900 Publications established in 2006 Onomastics Oxford dictionaries {{onomastics-stub