Lost My Name Books: What Happened to Them + Best Alternatives in 2026

If you searched "lost my name book," you're probably one of three people: a parent who received this book years ago and wants to buy it for a second child, a gift-giver who saw it at a friend's house and can't find the brand anymore, or someone who remembers the famous Dragons' Den pitch and wonders where the company went. Good news on all counts — the book never went away. The brand just changed its name, twice changed owners, and the wider personalized-book market changed around it. Here's the whole story.

What Happened to Lost My Name? The Short Version

Lost My Name was founded in London in 2012 by four dads — Asi Sharabi, David Cadji-Newby, Tal Oron, and Pedro Serapicos — who wanted to make a genuinely clever personalized book rather than the usual "insert name here" template. Their first title, The Little Boy Who Lost His Name (and its companion, The Little Girl Who Lost Her Name), launched in 2013 and had a brilliant hook: the story is literally generated from the letters of your child's name. A child named NORA meets a Narwhal, an Octopus, a Robot, and an Aardvark, each handing back one letter of her lost name.

The book became a phenomenon:

• 2014 — Dragons' Den. The founders pitched on the BBC show and Piers Linney invested £100,000 for just 4% of the company — one of the show's most famous deals. Sales exploded afterwards.
• 2013–2017 — global bestseller. The flagship title sold millions of copies and became, by many counts, the bestselling personalized children's book in the world, shipped to over 150 countries.
• July 2017 — rename to Wonderbly. By then the company had several other books, and being named after just one of them was confusing. They chose "Wonderbly," a blend of wonderful and impossibly. Same company, same products, new name. That same year they partnered with the Roald Dahl Literary Estate on personalized Dahl-world titles.
• July 2021 — private equity. Graphite Capital acquired Wonderbly, and the company kept growing — Wonderbly reports more than 8 million books sold worldwide.
• June 2025 — Penguin Random House. PRH acquired Wonderbly outright, making the former startup part of the world's largest trade publisher. The brand continues to operate under its own name.

So when people ask "is Lost My Name still in business?" the honest answer is: yes, and it's arguably in the strongest position of its life — it just hasn't been called Lost My Name for nearly a decade. We cover the current company in depth in our full Wonderbly review for 2026.

Why So Many People Still Search "Lost My Name"

Thousands of people search for the old brand every month, nine years after the rename — and it makes sense. The book's peak years (2014–2017) coincided with the first wave of children who received it as toddlers. Those kids now have younger siblings, cousins, and friends having birthdays, and the parents remember the product vividly but not the company's new name. The rebrand was the right business move — "Lost My Name" was a terrible name for a company selling thirty different books — but it quietly orphaned one of the most recognizable product names in the gift market.

There's also a second group: people who half-remember a news story about the company being "sold" and assume it shut down. It didn't. Both acquisitions — Graphite Capital in 2021 and Penguin Random House in 2025 — were growth purchases of a profitable business, not rescues. Your old account may even still work at wonderbly.com, and previously ordered books can typically be re-ordered with a new name for a new child.

Where to Buy the Original Book Today

The original book is alive and well. You'll find it at wonderbly.com — they maintain a dedicated "Lost My Name" collection — and on Wonderbly's official Amazon listings (The Little Boy Who Lost His Name / The Little Girl Who Lost Her Name). Personalization works exactly as you remember: enter the name, the story assembles itself letter by letter, and you preview every page before ordering.

• Price: roughly $32–$38 hardcover in the US (Wonderbly softcovers generally run $22–$28; UK pricing starts around £19.99)
• Delivery: printed on demand, typically 10–14 days standard shipping
• Formats: print only — no digital, no audio

How the Lost My Name Book Holds Up in 2026

Here's the honest assessment. The book deserved its success — the letter-by-letter story mechanic is still one of the cleverest pieces of personalization design ever shipped, and the illustration and print quality remain genuinely premium. If you're buying it as a nostalgic keepsake or to complete a sibling set, you will not be disappointed.

But the book was designed in 2013, and the personalization technology around it has moved a long way since:

Name-only personalization

The child's name drives the plot, but the child never actually appears in the book. There's no avatar in the original title and certainly no photo likeness — every child named Nora gets the same Narwhal, Octopus, Robot, and Aardvark pages. In 2013 that was magical. In 2026, AI-based services can put a recognizable illustrated version of your actual child — their face, their hair, their glasses — on every page, generated from a single photo. Once a child has seen themselves in a book, name-only personalization feels like a different category.