Judy, I always use Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns. It has line drawings of hundreds of blocks along with the earliest known source for the pattern and the many names by which the block is called. I'm a real nut for history and names of patterns. I've read that quilt blocks were not given names until the 20th century, but I read a book by Linda Otto Lipsett several years ago (I think it was named Ellen's Quilt???--I have it at home) and in the book, Ellen mentions in a letter to her sister (late 1800's) the name of a block she was working on. The name is unfamiliar to all of us today, so we'll never know what the block looked like. Lynn, the block names don't have to be completely right and they didn't say we couldn't make up our own names, did they?
I'm babysitting four of my grandchildren this weekend, so I don't have my trusty encyclopedia with me and I'll have to resort to the EQ 5 on my computer.