[.ca] Japanese Names: A Comprehensive Index by Characters and ... (ISBN 1891640186)

Somewhat useful, but far from comprehensive:
After hearing many people tell me how great this book was I finally bought it. While it has been somewhat useful in finding the readings for some names, it is far from being "A Comprehensive Index" of Japanese names. Less than half of the names I try to look up in it are even listed, and the way the kanji are indexed is not intuitive (even to someone familiar with radicals and stroke-count indices). I would only recommend this to someone who doesn't have access to a real name dictionary from Japan, but don't count on it to be "comprehensive" in any sense of the word. It's not even close.

Not nearly that bad...:
This book is great. It doesn't have every name, but that is a difficult task. it doesn't have alot of period names, but that's not what it was writen for. It was writen (in the 60's & 70's) to compile a list of readings and spellins of japanese names commonly used today (read 1972). It has Isaburou in it - that is a really rare name so you have to give O'Neill credit. But if you look up really old names (like medeival names) you probably aren't going to find it - but that's not what it's for - it's for names spellable with the 1,945 kanji deemed for general usage by the Japanese govt. in 1948 and the additional 284 allowed for name usage only. While that may seem like alot, that's peanuts compared to what was available in the day. So cut O'Neill a break - the book is a great general reference for Japanese names. A more comprehesive work (on surnames only) by Wolfgang Hadamitzky is available from KG Saur but it's composed of 3 massive (websters dictionary sized - the hardback version) volumes. O'Neill fits in your pocket.

Great for historical names:
Well, Japanese names, like names in other languages, are complicated. You cannot expect every Japanese name you've ever heard is in this book. Most names would have at least 2 Kanji representations, so it is difficult and unrealistic to include all representations. Just like there are several spellings for the name Catherine (Katherine, Katheryn, Kathrin...etc). So I would say this book is fairly useful. Especially when it comes to historical figures. If you have a English spelling of a Japanese name, you can find the corresponding Kanji representations without much trouble most of the times.