The Century Cyclopedia of Names - Edited by: Benjamin E. Smith.

Cat No.:   CA0068:

While the Century Company was compiling its Dictionary in the late 1800's it decided to draw all the proper name references it found into a separate appendix to be included in the last of the dictionary's eight volumes. When they completed the dictionary they found that the appendix of names was so large it justified a complete volume of its own. Consequently the first edition of the Cyclopedia of Names, for the single year of 1894, was published as a stand alone book. This is the edition of the book which has been reproduced here.

We are told there are over 25,000 name entries and from its weight alone that's easy to believe! Measuring 34 cm high by 25 cm wide and its 1085 pages making it over 6 cm thick, it is certainly one of our largest and heaviest books.

The names in the book are from all sources, all countries as well as from both fact and fiction although being an American publisher there may be some bias. Each entry provides a pronunciation guide and an etymology giving either: the earliest recognized use or, the life facts if it is a person. This will be an invaluable source of personal chronology if you were researching one of the characters cited.

This is a fascinating book to just dip into at random. It took a long time to scan because I kept on stopping to read out some interesting little tid-bit or another.

Although we have formatted the book to be computer searchable it should be unnecessary because all the names are in alphabetical order and fully bookmarked. You will have absolutely no problem reading the book although you may find it helpful to zoom-in for some of the smaller type passages. This is one of those occasions where the human reader far outperforms the machine reader.

No. of CDs is:  1 ;   Format is:  PDF ;   Searchable?:  YES;

FastFind:  No;  ISBN No.:   1-897338-19-8;