This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Fast Eddie: The discussion pages are for this kind of thing... //Ungvichian: Actually, thanks to Murphy Brown, I think of Murphy as a girl's name, or androgynous as the very least.
Licky Lindsay: there is an inevitable progression of formerly masculine or unisex names to become more feminine. Names that were originally surnames before they started being used a first names, are particular prone. Ashley was a boy's name when Gone with the Wind was written. Now it's mostly thought of as a girl's name. Whether these names went through a period being "tomboy" names before they became girl's name, I have no idea. I predict that within our lifetime, this process will be complete for Jordan, Taylor, and Murphy. (Anybody who's ever tried to name a pick out a good name for a baby, has probably thought about this stuff.)
Ununnilium: Jordan might hold on, either because of Michael Jordan or the Middle-Eastern state. It's already too late for Taylor.
Licky Lindsay: Madison and Addison seem to have skipped the middle step and jumped straight from surnames to girl's first names, in spite of being fairly masculine-souning if you hadn't already been conditioned to associate Addison with Kate Walsh's character on GreysAnatomy and Madison with a zillion 4 year old white girls (every preschool has at least one).
UnknownTroper: "Lindsay" is another "boys name now a girls name".
Ununnilium: Heh! True.
I wonder if it ever goes in the other direction? Female names becoming percieved as masculine?
Unknown Troper: I don't think so. I hate the incredibly sexist logic behind the "boys names on girls" trend - "to make my daughter strong and equal she must have a boys name!" - right, because people named Mary and Elizabeth never did anything...
Ununnilium: Any evidence that's where it actually comes from?
Licky Lindsay: yeah, Lindsay. I didn't remember that having been a "boys" name until it was pointed out here. As for where the naming trend comes from, I have no idea. I do know at least one "real world example" who chooses to go by her boyish middle name rather than her feminine first name, but I've never asked her why.
How about Fred Burkle from Angel? I'm surprised she wasn't mentioned.
Shiralee: Popular "female" Irish names seem to be making a comeback. Ironically, they became girls' names at first because they sound feminine to south Britons and Americans. (Kelly and Rowan/Roan especially.) Going full circle here. Also see: latin names like Tracy.
K.o.R: Nagisa is a boy's name? I don't think I've ever seen a boy named that. Pretty Cure, Firestorm, Strawberry Panic, Clannad... all girls.
Clerval: @Uuunnililum, well, the frequency with which male names become female and the rarity with which the reverse happens suggests that people feel that for a girl to have a boy's name says something good about her whereas for a boy to have a girl's name is just embarrassing. Which has pretty strong implications for the values society places on maleness and femaleness. Try and imagine a boy being called Angela or Christine just because the parents think it's different and cute.
"Tracy" a Latin name?
Nornagest: Cut
- * Trinity from The Matrix.
Trinity is a handle, not a name, and it takes quite a stretch to gender it. Neo does assume it refers to a guy at first, but who here hasn't had that problem with a handle at one time or another?
As to the debate above, I honestly think the gender shifts you see occasionally have more to do with linguistics than they do with value judgments. In English, names ending in -a, -i, and -ey are typically feminine; these are very common vowels, though, and show up in masculine names all the time in other languages. Linguistic drift causes these formerly masculine names (Ashley, Courtney, Sasha, et cetera) to become feminized. English doesn't have masculinity indicators in its names to anything close to the same extent, though, so there's no linguistic pressure to masculinize many non-English feminine names.
Nikita is a masculine name in Russia pretty exclusively, and MAYBE other Slavic speaking areas. Since it's so specific to a culture/region of the world, should that be mentioned?
Silent Hunter: I think Kim has been a male name in the past, but nowadays is thought of as female (shortened from Kimberley). That said, "Kim" Philby (Soviet mole in SIS during World War Two and The '50s) just had that as a nickname.
Prioris: I also think a big part of the trend comes from the constant pressure, at least among Americans, to come up with increasingly unique names for one's female children. (The pressure isn't nearly as pervasive with male children's names, for some reason.) Thus, since Mary, Elizabeth, Alice and the like were tapped out decades ago, people felt the need to mutate boys' names and surnames into "new, unique" girls' names. Now that we're running out of those, you're seeing more and more miscellaneous nouns and adjectives get the same treatment; witness Dawn, Belle/Bella, Destiny, Summer, etc.
Of course, one does run the risk of everybody else picking the same "new, unique" name all at once. As a real-life example, I vividly remember my second grade homeroom (circa 1990), which included four Lindsays and three Kimberleys. Calling on someone to answer questions was an exercise in either frustration or amusement, depending on your perspective.
Majutsukai: What's up with the organization on this page? It looks like whoever wrote it originally planned to arrange examples by name, but then decided halfway to divide it by media instead.
Daibhid C: I think it was originally disorganised, then someone organised it by media but decided to leave the long entries about "Sam" and "Alex" alone.
Seanette: Cut claim that Drew Barrymore's birth name was "Andrew" for lack of evidence checking sources that would be likely to have that information if true.
