It predates the US, but the name switch that has astonished me the most is "Anne" which was unambiguously masculine and is now so unambiguously feminine that it looks strange to see it used for a male in a historical context.
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The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.
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Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.
#22The prom king and queen at my high school had the first names Tracey and Tracy respectively. Paris is an interesting case as it is featured in Romeo and Juliet as a male name but seems to be mostly a female name now, at least in its Parris variant.
Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.
#23It predates the US, but the name switch that has astonished me the most is "Anne" which was unambiguously masculine and is now so unambiguously feminine that it looks strange to see it used for a male in a historical context.
The male and female names have different origins, and Anne was never a masculine name in english so it’s not a transition.
Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.
#24I find the Krishna name interesting. Krishna is a male Hindu deity. However, it seems a lot of people were naming their girls Krishna. Now, it is a boy's name again. My speculation for the cause of this is that Hare Krishna became popular among certain US groups in the 1970's and a lot of them named their daughters Krishna. Then, in more recent times, there has been a lot more immigration from India into the US, and…
Perhaps in the 70s people also stuck to the general trend of female names ending with a vowel while make names typically ended with a consonant. Immigration from cultures such as India where this isn't the trend might indeed be responsible for it waning.
Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.
#25The prom king and queen at my high school had the first names Tracey and Tracy respectively. Paris is an interesting case as it is featured in Romeo and Juliet as a male name but seems to be mostly a female name now, at least in its Parris variant.
Long before Shalespeare, Paris is also a male in ancient Greek mythology. (No relation to the name of the city of Paris BTW.)
Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.
#26This is also a list of the stupidest names in US History. The reason nobody can figure out whether "Ashtin" is a girl's or boy's name is because it's not a name. Same for "Tristyn" and most of the rest of this brain damage.
> is because it's not a name
What, pray tell, are you using as the definition of what is or is not a name? You appear to be saying something has to be a common name to be a name, which opens the question of how new common names ever come about.
I'm sure you're not saying that everyone that chose unconventional names that became conventional for your lifetime and peer group chose "names" and everyone else that chose unconventional names chose the "stupid(est) names" due to "brain damage"...but I struggle to make sense of what you said in any other way.
So what am I missing?
Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.
#27[deleted]
Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.
#28I don't know whether it's a problem with my browser or the website, but the font rendering is really bad for this site.
font-family:"Mercury SSm A", "Mercury SSm B";
Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.
#29It predates the US, but the name switch that has astonished me the most is "Anne" which was unambiguously masculine and is now so unambiguously feminine that it looks strange to see it used for a male in a historical context.
Different language families. It is/was feminine in the Latin world, and masculine, related to germanic Arne, in some pockets of Western Europe [Frisia, Scotland, France]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne
Interesting that the one Scottish and one English entry in that list were both named after Queen Anne. Was it generally acceptable to name boys after well-known women, or only after female royalty?
Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.
#30I find the Krishna name interesting. Krishna is a male Hindu deity. However, it seems a lot of people were naming their girls Krishna. Now, it is a boy's name again. My speculation for the cause of this is that Hare Krishna became popular among certain US groups in the 1970's and a lot of them named their daughters Krishna. Then, in more recent times, there has been a lot more immigration from India into the US, and…
Though Krishnā is also a name, and the feminine version of Krishna (Krishnā is one of Draupadi's other names; where both Krishna and Draupadi are characters in the _Mahabharata_).