I have no idea about Israeli name books, especially ones available in Europe. I only know ones that come in pregnancy books and stuff. And they're just long lists. At least the one I've got. But most sites on the Internet with Hebrew names that know Hebrew are reliable with meanings, if that's what you want - there isn't much place to go wrong, I mean, in English,
Charles and
Richard aren't words, but in Hebrew most names are (and if not, btn is reliable), since most names are either from the Bible and a lot of the words in Hebrew spoken today are from the Bible, (we can actually read the original Bible and understand most of it, yay) or they're modern names, from modern words (ever since
Eliezer Ben Yehuda made them up, and that's not too long ago). Hebrew is a strange sort of language, when you think of it.
And has
Chava Alberstein really gotten around that much? (I'd guess you live in
America or Britain or somewhere else?) I didn't know that. And I'd say this change took place when people actually started to speak Hebrew again after Biblical times - Hebrew really hasn't been around all that much time, and neither has
Israel. Unless they spoke it in other places? I don't know.