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If you are trying to judge whether or not a book or article is reliable or scholarly, the best quick decision point is simply to see whether or not it has a reference list. Any truly scholarly work will have a reference list or bibliography attached to it so you can look up its own sources.

Depending on the time period you're looking for, Jstor can be great for attestations of rare/historical names

Usually I look at the language and look it up in a relevant monolingual dictionary specialising in names for that language. If I don't know of one for that language, I look up the names verbatim on Google, and try to find the authoritative sources. Mainly, I look through Wikipedia or Wiktionary to see if they have a sourced etymology for the name or other names in the same language (which could lead back to the name I'm searching for). Sometimes I also look to less reliable sites to see if I can find an etymology that I can trace back.