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ArchivesMr. Lansky is notoriously unreliable
in reply to a message by slgn4
He's a "baby name" book author. And, as I've been saying 'til I'm blue in the face, 99% of name books and sites with the word "baby" in the title can't be trusted. They're fabulously inaccurate, usually, and have little or no etymological origins or sources listed. Every name usually has a meaning, even for names whose meanings are truly unknown. And sometimes the author just pulls a meaning out of his/her butt to fill the "meaning" part--preferably in as little words as possible, with little or no discussion on possible alternate meanings.
Lansky himself is reportedly one of the least accurate of the bunch, despite his being touted as a "name expert". He says, for example that Aidan means "warmth of the home" and that Ada means "prosperous, happy". And I've heard that he's the one responsible for creating the totally false "daughter of the wise ruler" meaning for Mackenzie, and he definitely lists Adama as meaning "woman"/"woman of the red earth", even though changing the gender usage of a name doesn't change gender references in the name's meaning itself.
He also lists names under "Native American" instead of "Mapuche" or "Navajo", which is like saying "x means y in Asian" instead of "Japanese" or "Chinese" or whatever. And he fills up his 35,000, 94,000, or whatever titular number quotient with kre8iv spellings such as Abbegayle or Aleisha (and those spellings are taken directly from one of his books, because I looked inside 35,000+ Baby Names on Amazon.com).
And he even says that conventional masculine names on girls "projects an image of competence, intelligence and strength of character", and he recommends staying away from feminine names that end in -ie, -y, or -i because they "may make it harder for a woman to be taken seriously". I wonder if he includes Mary in that list of "no -y names". *Rolls eyes*
EDIT: Clarification here and there.
Miranda
"Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of diseased mind" -- Terry Pratchett
Proud adopter of 15 punctuation marks. Check my profile for their names.
Lansky himself is reportedly one of the least accurate of the bunch, despite his being touted as a "name expert". He says, for example that Aidan means "warmth of the home" and that Ada means "prosperous, happy". And I've heard that he's the one responsible for creating the totally false "daughter of the wise ruler" meaning for Mackenzie, and he definitely lists Adama as meaning "woman"/"woman of the red earth", even though changing the gender usage of a name doesn't change gender references in the name's meaning itself.
He also lists names under "Native American" instead of "Mapuche" or "Navajo", which is like saying "x means y in Asian" instead of "Japanese" or "Chinese" or whatever. And he fills up his 35,000, 94,000, or whatever titular number quotient with kre8iv spellings such as Abbegayle or Aleisha (and those spellings are taken directly from one of his books, because I looked inside 35,000+ Baby Names on Amazon.com).
And he even says that conventional masculine names on girls "projects an image of competence, intelligence and strength of character", and he recommends staying away from feminine names that end in -ie, -y, or -i because they "may make it harder for a woman to be taken seriously". I wonder if he includes Mary in that list of "no -y names". *Rolls eyes*
EDIT: Clarification here and there.
Miranda
"Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of diseased mind" -- Terry Pratchett
Proud adopter of 15 punctuation marks. Check my profile for their names.
This message was edited 3/23/2005, 6:15 PM
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