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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.

#41

Post by crazygringo »

First, this is a great and original (AFAIK) post. Kudos to the author!

Second, I actually find the most interesting fact to be completely unmentioned by the author: that in the first chart (greatest absolute changes), of the 30 biggest swaps, only two were female->male, while the other 28 (over 90%!) were male->female.

It's a remarkable fact -- makes me think of how it's historically been much more acceptable for women to adopt men's styles of clothing, but much less accepted for men to adopt's women's styles of clothing. And with names being equally "fashionable", this fits the same trend.

This also explains what I'd observed but never articulated about late 19th- and early 20th-century fiction: how come so many men have what are to me "women's names"?

Utterly fascinating.

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#42

Post by twic »

tom_mellior wrote: post #25
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #22

The 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.)

Meanwhile, to the Greeks, Troy was a city, but to us, a Chad.

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#44

Post by cossray »

Kenyatta: Interesting name whose origin (by Wikipedia) is skewed. It mentions individuals born in 21st century and completely ignores the 1st person to literally hold that name: Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, born in early 1890's. It wasn't a traditional African name, but he bestowed it upon himself in his early 20's. Among the Maasai community, it referred to a traditional belt and Jomo, whilst living amongst the Maasai always had such a belt. The name fascinated him and he adopted it, altering the spelling to include 'Kenya' since he'd political ambitions

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#45

Post by whack »

At the risk of turning an innocent topic into a political discussion, I wonder how much of this trend can be explained by societal privilege. Ie, parents (consciously or subconsciously) want their daughters to benefit from appearing male (at least on paper) and so give them ambiguous or masculine names. And of course, the same parents would do the exact opposite for their sons, by not selecting any name that might be ambiguous in any way.

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#46

Post by lacampbell »

lotophage wrote: post #43

I've never heard of, let alone met people with, many of these names. Kenyatta, Jael, Gentry, Aven, Daylin.

Presumably named after Jomo Kenyatta, who was Kenyas first president in the 60s and 70s.

I can't really tell you why that name took off, maybe due to some of these Americans, who were presumably named after the Kenyan president?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenyatta_(given_name)

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#48

Post by jghn »

crazygringo wrote: post #41

First, this is a great and original (AFAIK) post. Kudos to the author! Second, I actually find the most interesting fact to be completely unmentioned by the author: that in the first chart (greatest absolute changes), of the 30 biggest swaps, only two were female->male, while the other 28 (over 90%!) were male->female. It's a remarkable fact -- makes me think of how it's historically been much more acceptable for wom…

I think it was the original Freakonomics book where I first saw this but it’s a known effect. Name switching is indeed almost purely a one way street

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#49

Post by DonaldFisk »

bmm6o wrote: post #39

I was just thinking about this the other night... my waitress's name was Leslie and I remember hearing that it had been predominantly a male name. Maybe that's not accurate, I didn't see it in the list. Regardless, it's interesting (but not surprising, really) to me that shifting masculine to feminine is way more common than vice versa. I wonder how universal that is across cultures.

It might depend on the spelling. In the UK, Leslie is a boy's name and Lesley is a girl's name, same pronunciation.

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#50

Post by weare138 »

lotophage wrote: post #43

I've never heard of, let alone met people with, many of these names. Kenyatta, Jael, Gentry, Aven, Daylin.

I've heard those names before or variations of them but the one that threw me off was Kirby as a girls name. I can honestly say I've never met/read/heard of a woman named Kirby.
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