This Dictionary is part of the Oxford Reference Collection: using sustainable print-on-demand technology to make the acclaimed backlist of the Oxford Reference programme perennially available in hardback format. The fascinating and informative Dictionary of First Names covers over 6,000 names in common use in English, including the very newest names as well as traditional names. From Alice to Zanna and Adam to Zola this book will answer all your questions: it will tell you the age, origin, and meaning of the name, as well as how it has fared in terms of popularity, and who the famous fictional or historical bearers for the name have been. It covers alternative spellings, short forms and pet forms, and masculine and feminine forms, as well as help with pronunciation. The book includes extensive appendices covering names from languages including Scottish, Irish, French, German, Italian, Arabic, and Chinese names. Tables of the most popular names by year and by region are also included. From the traditional to the rare and unconventional, this book will tell you everything you need to know about names.

According to a long-standing astronomical tradition, the naming of minor planets in the solar system is the privilege of the discoverers. Contrary to most other kinds of celestial objects which receive complex alpha-numerical designations, the names of minor planets often say more about the discoverers than about the object in question. There is a rich and colourful variety of ingenious names, from those of heavenly goddesses in the nineteenth century, to the more prosaic and sometimes very specific names of observatories, towns and mountains, computers and persons, given by present-day discoverers. Commission 20 of the International Astronomical Union, under whose auspices the naming of minor planets falls, has long been concerned with the need to establish a complete catalogue of these names, as well as of the interpretation of their meanings. For this purpose, a Study Group on the Origin of Minor Planet Names was set up at the time of the IAU General Assembly in Baltimore in August 1988. The Working Group immediately started to collect information about these matters from all available sources, including some earlier, incomplete compilations made in the U.S. and in Europe, and also by personal interaction with living discoverers of minor planets.

This volume provides the origins and meanings of the names of genera and species of extant vascular plants, with the genera arranged alphabetically from A to C.