There is no Planet B
I agree this page needs help.
The sandbox doesn't look bad! (Except there are some example indentation issues.)
Also, I just randomly spotted one movie example missing, but I haven't done any serious checkup.
But I wholeheartedly agree with deleting all general examples that are used as gender-neutral names in RL.
We probably need more people agreeing with this action before we can swap the trope page with the sandbox.
Yeah, the sandbox is half done. I've removed the problematic folders, and the remaining examples has not been sorted by Medium. I've added the folders and moved some examples to the appropriate ones, but they're not finished (it has more than I expected). It would be great if other tropers could help sort out the examples as well. Thank you.
We could write a Useful Note based on the rest of the folders, similar to Misplaced Nationalism and UsefulNotes.Separated By A Common Language, since it would be useful for fiction creators to understand the gender dynamics of the masculinity or femininity of given names, e.g. when naming their own characters or planning a plot point based on the trope.
Edited by Albert3105 on Dec 6th 2019 at 8:26:34 AM
Discarded and Feeling Blue
Hey, I've been told about this effort after my complaint in this thread
, involving the soft-split being...horribly thought out. I'll be happy to help out in the sandbox, and I'll probably be adding that one example I could never crosswick before now. What else needs doing?
There is no Planet B
I think we need about 10 people (that is 6 more because four of us agreed already) to say, yep, this is a cool change. I think 10 votes counts as sufficient consensus for a bigger action like a complete page overhaul.
On the other hand, those generic ZCE are hardly allowed. So perhaps we might proceed as it is.
Moving some of the content to useful notes sounds okay. I was also considering the Analysis subpage.
Edited by XFllo on Dec 7th 2019 at 6:30:36 PM
As a note, the examples that are left on the sandbox are just from the first folder, "Chosen on Purpose", and I simply cut the rest. But if there are valid examples to be found on those folders, they can be added into the appropriate media folder in the Sandbox page.
And I'm not sure about the Titles folder. Should that be added back in as well? It looks like a separate trope.
Edited by Adept on Dec 8th 2019 at 2:01:50 AM
Oh, wow. I came here expecting to need to discuss wicks, and maybe someone having an overly-narrow definition of the trope. But we're not even there, because the actual trope page is just terrible.
So yeah, agreed. Both the unnecessary soft-splitting and the bizarrely generic lists of names are bad. This should be about specific examples.
EDIT: And the "titles" section definitely looks like She Is the King. The Dragon Age example is on Fantastic Honorifics ("ser" is a weirdly common subtype), and a few of the others might fit there too.
Edited by Discar on Dec 7th 2019 at 10:11:31 AM
I just found this project. I support it in principle, in that this trope should be limited to in-universe examples—the current page looks like something from Names The Same.
However, I have another problem: what is the interplay between this and Tomboyish Name after this retool? Still a supertrope-subtrope relationship, or a sister trope relationship?
Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra Nova
I think Tomboyish Name is a subtrope. A girl has a masculine name or nickname to emphasize her Tomboy nature. Gender-Blender Name is simply a person with a name commonly associated with the opposite sex, but doesn't carry any characterization trope with it.
Which means we should also screen the sandbox for examples that should be in Tomboyish Name, in that case.
Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra Nova
Are there anything we can do to push forward this project? That page, as I mentioned several months ago, is utter unusable.
Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra Nova
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
For now, we just sort out the examples in the Sandbox by the appropriate media, then I think we can replace the example.
she/her
I sorted most of the remaining unsorted examples, but there are a lot I'm not sure about. I'm not sure if visual novels get their own folder or if they go under video games, and I also don't remember if Web Original folders are allowed anymore. I also don't know if the real names of musicians go under the real life or music folder.
- If Stanley Allison Rogers and Gordon Meredith Lightfoot are any indication, the Canadian folk scene is paradise for men with feminine middle names. Except that Meredith was an exclusively male name until late in the 20th century — as Meredith Hunter could have told you, if he hadn't been murdered by Hell's Angels at a Rolling Stones concert. Meredith Blake from Agatha Christie's Five Little Pigs is another example. It has been speculated that Merida from Brave was planned to be Meredith, until the writer found out about this. Multiple examples here, and I don't know enough about any of them to write them up separately.
- Rapper Tramar Dillard must not have cared that Flo was short for Florence, traditionally a female name, when taking Flo Rida as his stage name. And, yes, that is his home state. This is more of a pun on "low rider", making it an incidental example at best. I'm tempted to just cut it for misuse.
- The gynecologist brothers from Dead Ringers are named Elliot and Beverly. It's implied that their parents gave Bev a girl's name to help set their identical twins' childhood experiences apart from one another. No idea what "Dead Ringers" is.
- Bryan Fuller likes to do this to his female characters. Is this correct indentation?
- In Wonderfalls the main female character is named Jaye, which is a little ambiguous.
- Dead Like Me made this habit blatant, with the main female character George(tte) and her sister Reggie (Regina).
- Ned's love interest in Pushing Daisies is Charlotte... but goes by Chuck.
- The trope is used in the 16th century madrigal "Of all the birds that I do know", which is ostensibly about a pet sparrow named Philip, but which is always referenced with female pronouns. There is probably some sort of Double Entendre that hasn't survived for 400 years, but the song is still beautiful. Can be found here. No idea where to categorize this.
- A few Vivians (variously spelled) so far, but no mention of Vivian Stanshall (born Victor Anthony), the Bonzo Dog Band frontman, among other things, who embraced the christened name of his father (who hated it and prefered to be called Victor). General example.
- Where to categorize this is a mystery, due to limited character information, but it really ought to be known that somewhere in the Star Wars universe lurks a grizzled genocidal maniac named Danetta, who is, as far as anyone can tell, a man. Did his parents give him a girl's name? Is the suffix -etta somehow a masculine additive, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away? Is he hiding more than one terrible secret? The world will probably never know, because his creators have most likely forgotten that he exists, as is the fate of many Star Wars Legends characters. The wiki is no help in determining where this example should go. If nothing else, I guess we should file it under Film, as the original medium for Star Wars.
- Country Music singer Gus Hardin was a female. (Her real name was Carolyn Ann Blankenship.) Musician.
- A more common example is singer Charly McClain (short for Charlotte). Musician.
- The Chukchi tribe will give boys female names and girls male names to confuse evil spirits. General example.
- Superhero and supervillain codenames can fall prey to this, especially if it involves a foreign language. One well-known example is the former X-Man Sean Cassidy aka the Banshee (bean sí is Irish Gaelic for "woman-fairy"), another is the Russian superhero Ursa Major (Ursa major is the Latin name of the constellation colloquially known as the "Big Dipper" - it literally means "great she-bear"). General example, I think? I don't know.
- Major League Baseball pitcher Madison Bumgarner, thanks to "Splash". Until that movie, it was a relatively unknown boys' name. Does this go under real life or film? I don't know.
- Homosexual men in fiction are sometimes given gender-bending names to emphasize their perceived femininity: for example, Ian McShane's character Meredith in 44 Inch Chest and Beverly Leslie in Will & Grace. General example.
- In some areas of Sweden (such as Dalecarlia), people still occasionally use the name of the family farm as part of their personal name, regardless of whether the farm had a "male" or a "female" name. For example, a man living at a farm called Sara (a female name) might be named Sara Erik Persson. This naming convention is becoming increasingly rare, but used to be somewhat common before industrialization. General example.
- Some theme park rides with pre-recorded video use this so that the ride attendant can be male or female. For instance, at the "Disaster!" ride at Universal Studios Orlando, the real-life person interacting with Frank Kincaid (a pre-filmed Christopher Walken) is named Lonnie, which can be a boy or a girl. At the "Rock 'n' Roller Coaster starring Aerosmith" in Disney's Hollywood Studios park, the assistant in the recording booth who interacts with Aerosmith in the pre-ride video is similarly named "Sam". This is Gender Neutral Writing, not this trope.
- Jack Monroe, the food writer, journalist, anti-poverty campaigner and author of the book A Girl Called Jack (also previously the name of their blog), who was previously called by a more obviously female name (however, now identifies as non-binary transgender). Is it really a "name usually given to the opposite gender" if the person is non-binary? I think this is misuse.
- Starship Ezekiel from My Girlfriend Is the President. But you can call her Ell. Visual novel.
- Singer Annie Clark chose her stage name from the hospital where Dylan Thomas died as referenced in a song by Nick Cave. She apparently didn't care this would make her known as St. Vincent. Musician.
- Skid Row bassist Rachel Bolan, born James Southworth. The Bolan comes from T-Rex vocalist Marc Bolan, while the Rachel part may be because feminine-sounding names for a male musician were quite a thing in the glam metal scene, thus Rachel being more appropriate than Jim or Jimmy. Musicians.
- Almost the entire glam metal band Pretty Boy Floyd chose feminine stage names for themselves: Kristy "Krash" Majors and Keri Kelli (both guitarists) and Kari Kane (drummer). Only the singer, Steve, and bassist, Vinnie, have recognizable boy names.
- The Misaki sisters from Go! Go! Nippon! are named Makoto and Akira, which are usually thought of as male names. In fact the protagonist is confused when they come taking him at the airport, since he was expecting two boys. Visual novel.
Edited by Serac on May 28th 2020 at 9:32:44 AM
In your top example, Meredith Blake from Five Little Pigs seems like a shoehorn. Meredith has only really taken off as a girl's name since the second half of the 20th century in the US. It's a boy's name originally and remains primarily a boy's name in the UK, even to this day.
In Agatha Christie's day, people wouldn't expect a person named Meredith to be a woman.
Edited by Wyldchyld on May 29th 2020 at 7:31:01 PM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
I don't know why, but Discar modified the sandbox to that of the actual page.
Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra Nova
Discarded and Feeling Blue
Because he also moved the original sandbox contents to the trope page.
A follow-up to this ATT thread
to fix the examples in Gender-Blender Name. As it stands, most of the "examples" listed in the current page are generic list of names that the audience might find gender misleading (despite the fact that this is not a YMMV trope).
Since most of the folders contain virtually no valid examples from actual work pages, I've deleted all the folders except for the first one in this sandbox page.
Current tasks at hand:
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Edited by Adept on Dec 8th 2019 at 2:46:53 AM