Cool name resource

Yesterday I stumbled across a cool name resource: the TeachingBooks Author & Illustrator Pronunciation Guide. It has recordings of thousands of children’s & YA authors and illustrators demonstrating how to pronounce their names. Some are really short, with the author or illustrator just introducing themselves slowly and carefully, but a lot of them also tell a little story about their name.

Here’s a couple of my favorites:

• Fracaswell Hyman is the reason I found this site. I saw his name in the credits for Lyla in the Loop, and immediately googled “fracaswell name” hoping to learn more. How satisfying to find this recording where he answers all my questions!
• Grace Lin tells an interesting story about her mother’s name.
• Jon Klassen has a really sweet story about why he started going by Jon (instead of Jonathan).
• Darcie Little Badger shares a really cool Lipan origin story featuring the badger, and also drops the absolutely fascinating tidbit that “we don’t normally say our names, but the English translation is fair game.” I would love to hear more about that but I couldn’t find anything useful online about Lipan or Apache names (perhaps that’s related?).

Anyway, I thought this was a really interesting resource for anyone who likes names. Poke around the list and see what stories you find!