anyone know how to look up words in other languages (for names)?

[3for3hb]

I am looking for earthy words, like sun, sky etc in other languages hoping to come up with a cool first name for a girl. I like the names I have so far, I think I would like to be a little more unique maybe. Anyone have any suggestions?

I was thinking of looking up some non-traditional names too, anyone have a good resource? The traditional mainstream baby name books bore me to tears!

[3for3hb]

oh, i forgot to add, does anyone know of a website where you can put in the meaning of a name (or the meaning you want) and a list of names is created? I had a good one last time but I can't find it now.

[MamaFern]

i remember finding one when i was pregnant with elwynn but i have no idea.. try googling it?

[*Amy*]

There is a nice one at Ivillage that will create a list of names based on the word you like. It's quite handy.

For general translation of words in many languages, Babelfish is great.

[flyingspaghettimama]

For the most accurate representation, I would go to a public library and use one of the actual books there for translating english-foreign language; and back again to make sure there are no "double meanings" that could be potentially embarrassing. There was a post on a baby name site where people were considering names in a Native American language, a guy who spoke the language wrote in to say those names also meant things that were uh...really inappropriate to say the least.

In the reference area, there should be a large collection of dictionaries. I think the biggest problem with many of the websites is that they're not as accurate as the dictionaries published by big publishers. Our local libraries have dictionaries in Amharic, German, Spanish, Tagalog, Vietnamese, French, Russian, Ethiopian, etc etc.

Or you could pick names using internet sources people suggest, and then go double-check them with an actual dictionary (or ask one of us here to visit ours and check for you). Good luck!