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'Boy' names and 'girl' names


AnomalyEternal

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AnomalyEternal

(I don't know if this is the right place to put this but I'm going to put it here)

Ok, let me tell you something about myself. I love names. I don't just like names. I love names. Especially old-fashioned names. If I like your name, there is the very large chance I will like the rest of you simply because I like the way your name sounds. When I was a bit younger, I fell utterly in love with the name Alistair. I started to tell all the other kids about it and wanted them to call me Alistair because I liked it so much more than my real name - Stephanie. They went along with it. I got this from the adults; "don't be silly, that's a boys' name!" And it got me thinking.

I do not assign genders to names. I do not believe there are names that sound 'male' or 'female'. Constance is apparently a girls' name, yet I always thought (and still do) it would be lovely to meet a boy named Constance or a girl named Fletcher. I always thought that gender did not matter when it came to someone's name. As I grew up, I realised other people generally did not think like this, and that most names had an 'assigned gender' just as rigid as the Binary 'male and female'. Sure, I found a few names that were considered androgynous, but there was always that strict rigidity. And I didn't like it.

I believe that names are just as diverse as gender itself, and that they shouldn't be considered 'girly' or 'manly' just because of the way they sound or who they've been involved with in the past. I have a fascination with people who have names generally associated with the other gender, just because they are further pushing the boundaries of what is considered 'masculine' and 'feminine'. I have not found anyone so far, but does anyone here on AVEN share this or have a similar viewpoint of names and their role and influence on gender and what is considered 'boys' names and 'girls' names?

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I'm much the same way. When I was in high school, an acquaintance of mine asked me "If you could change your name to anything, what would it be?" And I said Vincent, because I love that name. And the response that I got was "But that's a BOY'S name."

I am genderqueer (born female) and I would feel a bit awkward with a name like Vincent, but only because of how other people would act toward me. I prefer androgynous names for myself. But there are many "masculine" and "feminine" names that I like, and I do kind of think it's unfair that they are gendered the way they are. Like pretty much everything else in the world. :rolleyes:

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Eh, this division on male and female names is kinda strange for me. It's a relict of old Times when gender was associated only with biology and believed to be eternal for whole life. You know, the division was very strong, so they just created male and female only names to mark it. It's my opinion.

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Unfortunately, trying to defy the boy/girl name stereotype is pretty much just a good way to get your kid teased relentlessly. For me it pretty much crosses the "why would you do that to your kid?" territory for me.

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:wub: Alistair from dragon age origins :wub:

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I am much the same in that I don't like the rigidity system of having the "boy names and girl names"

Also I find I really like it when people have names that are used for the gender which they are "not supposed to be for"

But then, I often like people who challenge "normal"

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Queer As Cat

social gendering of names annoys me a lot... so much so that even though i love my given name due to loving my namesake, i also hate it because it is something that society will forever use against me to misgender me. i was really torn for a while about changing my name and it was really hard to choose a gender neutral name, but eventually i did and i couldn't be happier.

...despite the fact that society will without a doubt continue to misgender me with it. :mellow:

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Lambda Corvus

I certainly understand where you are coming from, as I feel the same about gendering names. To me, it seems wholely unnecessary to pick out one name, claim it is male or female, and apply it to a person whose gender you don't know. Names are usually given to people by their parents, far before any semblance of personality appears, when the child's gender is unknown. And yet, somehow, names can be associated with gender. It is just another aspect of the enforced binary.

I have yet to pin down a neutral name to apply to myself; I just haven't seen any I like which do not conjure up negative images. I can't stay with my birth name, however.

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Riley J Wise

My dad gave me two names that could be perceived as either gender (the J standing for Jordan). Throughout the places I've lived I've met both boys and girls around my age that share one of these names. None of them seemed to care that their name could be viewed as girly or boyish and I definitely didn't. I agree with you that a name shouldn't have a gender as names are abstract things. In french class, when learning about the differences of le and la, I was confused as to why mansion would use the feminine the (la) and why book would use the masculine the (le). Nobody (not even the french teacher) seemed to know. Assigning a gender to a name is as silly as giving one to a book.

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Vivaldi Ives

I also think that we don't need to have rigid sets of "boy" names and "girl" names. However, there are a lot of names that are strongly associated with one gender or the other, at least in the US--for example, Julia as a boy's name and Jonathan as a girl's name would culturally sound very strange. Still, I like the idea of being more flexible with names. For a while now, I've thought that Brian could be a nice girl's name even though I think it's very bland as a boy's name. Particularly if you put it with a more feminine middle name, like Brian Rose.

And dwtt96--I think Fletcher sounds really nice for both boys and girls! It sounds more on the feminine (not necessarily female) side. I may have to use that name for a fictional character someday...

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I actually have trouble thinking of names for characters when I write. But then they pop in. I guess it doesn't matter so much, and I think both the names you mentioned seemed like either to me, but I'm weird, so there you go. I do know that when I changed my name, I apparently picked a spelling that is pretty unique, which is cool. It also makes it hard to get it across how to spell, because people resist "Lilyan".

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Suddenly I remembered the name of one of my friends and thought of this thread. Kjersten. That should be a fun one for people to guess the gender of lol Of course, since I only know of one person with that name, it kind of matches that person in my mind, so... Anyway, for you name seekers and lovers :)

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Mezzo Forte

I definitely wish that names were less associated with gender, though I guess a lot of naming conventions do rely on gender a bit. I'm actually really fond of gender neutral names, and my dad almost gave me my personal favorite gender neutral name, Logan, but my mom felt strongly about giving me an incredibly unambiguous one instead because of her experiences growing up with an almost exclusively masculine name. I really wouldn't mind people calling me that, but at the same time, I like all the alliteration that my given name invites and just wish that people perceived it as less gendered.

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I find it odd when girls have traditionally male names.

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I don't mind that names are so gendered, but I also believe that someone should have the right to name their child what they think fits. Obviously I don't think a child born female should be given a traditionally male name just to make a statement, but if you think a certain name fits your idea of what you want for your child, and you don't think gender restricts that, then go crazy.

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but my mom felt strongly about giving me an incredibly unambiguous one instead because of her experiences growing up with an almost exclusively masculine name.

Same with my mom. She (and my dad) also gave us very common names, like David. bleah

I love names, too. And I think it's cool when people have interesting names, whether it's gender-neutral or gender-defying or a different spelling or something cultural or whatever.

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I'm like you, I love names. I used to spend a lot of time on baby name websites and my parents would always ask me what I was doing looking up baby names. (Cause I'm pregnant, duh?). I'm kind of indifferent to how names are so gendered? I've never given it much thought, but it doesn't bother me so much as I think as our culture evolves, names should be becoming less and less gendered, but it's happening at a pretty slow rate. I think gender-neutral names are awesome, but at the same time they frustrate me because even though they're labelled as "gender-neutral," most of them still have a male or female leaning.

As for me, I hate my birth name. It's so common (#14 for my birth year) and so stereotypically female that it makes me sick. I always tell people "I really don't feel like -name- fits me," but they're always quick to disagree. I don't know if anyone suspects it's because I don't feel all that female.

After much deliberation, I've decided that I like the name "Kiean." I think it's lovely.

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HiddenDemons

For me, I'm 50/50. I prefer really unique (but still easy to pronounce and spell) names myself and I think that as someone pointed out, I more think that there are names that fit better with boys or better on girls. However, when I mentioned to my mum that if/when I have kids I would like to name a girl Noah cause I think it's a very nice name my mum was not accepting of it and said, "it's a boys name" but I think it's a very nice girls name (Noah Cyrus, actress), though it is uncommon, I think it's very nice.

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HorrorShow!

I wouldn't say I LOOOOOVE names. But I love language and what the heck is the diff?! x'D It's always seemed a little odd to me as well. Not just gender specificity either, but I mean...why can't you use any word to describe yourself? Most names are not devoid of meaning anyway. They were actual words, from other languages. My name is Aidan, and it's celtic for 'fire' or 'firey'. So...why do people get their panties in a bunch when Chris Martin names his kid Apple?

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  • 2 weeks later...

I was named after my uncle Jackie, so I obviously am all for gender-bending names and gender-neutral names and all that. Even if his "Jackie" was short for "Joaquin" and mine for "Jacqueline".

If I somehow got talked into having kids, though, they probably would have either very old-fashioned, gendered names (but I would allow them to change their names and constantly talk to them about gender roles and identities), or very modern, sci-fi/mythology-themed names. I like odd names. I kind of want to change my own name, actually.

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swim2thesun

I generally thing of names as gender neutral things to begin with, although I will admit that I didn't always think that; like how i gawked when i learned that the male host for a show i'd watched and my friend's dad was named Ashley, which I had understood as a traditionally 'female' name.

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collocations

My name is Joyce which is sort of associated with female in most English-speaking countries, but I'm from a Latin American country where Spanish is the only official language so I always get weird looks when I introduce myself. The way they try to spell it is hilarious sometimes, too.

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I wish I could see all names as gender-neutral! I've been trying to find a good gender-neutral name for myself, but I keep leaning toward "male" names - currently I feel like the name Damon is perfect for me; the only problem is that it doesn't feel right when I feel more female. I hate that I assign genders to names. It's upsetting that a name that fits me perfectly 90% of the time feels wrong sometimes just because of gender. It'd be nice if I'd never been taught that some names are "for girls" and others are "for boys"!

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littlepersonparadox

From the nameing stand point my first name means little soldier and my last name means little nose. So im a little solder with a little nose. I loved telling people that as a kid. When writting I absolutely obess over finding the perfect name. I really loved the name I gave my first major character. Aaron Nathaniel Thames.

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I would totally tell you my full name, but then it would be easy to find me, and I don't feel like being stalked. :P

My name is pretty old-fashioned, and rolls of the tongue pleasantly. I was named after my great grandmothers. My mom's side is French, and my dad's Spanish. My mom's name is Lavonne, and her mother Francis. My dad's mother's name is Rosaline. Love old-fashined names XD

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It's easier with some languages than others - many use certain suffixes to indicate gender, or inflect for case in different ways according to gender. To take Gaelic for example, the vocative case is different in the masculine than the feminine, so you really have to pick one from the moment you want to say "Hello, so-and-so," regardless of what the name itself is.

How far grammatical gender aligns with identity is not something I've ever thought about before, though having masculine and feminine variants of the same name (Victor, Victoria etc.) goes some way to solving this.

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Anna Nomaly

How far grammatical gender aligns with identity is not something I've ever thought about before, though having masculine and feminine variants of the same name (Victor, Victoria etc.) goes some way to solving this.

The assumed gender of a name certainly goes a long way towards determining how society will treat the bearer of that name. After all, how else is one supposed to know whether to coo "aren't you handsome" vs. "aren't you a beauty"? Or what color clothing and toys to buy for the baby shower? :rolleyes: The masculine/feminine classification of names is one of the first steps in funneling boys and girls into their respective boxes, and that societal pressure often makes it especially hard for those who feel they're in the wrong box, as well as those who were named outside their box.

What really frustrates me is how suddenly a name can jump from the boy box to the girl box, like Meredith and Ariel, and everyone in the English-speaking world is supposed to keep track. Even MacKenzie is vastly more often given to girls than to boys, which makes no sense.

My favorite names are the kind with awesomeness that transcends gender. I once met a little girl named Omega, which I thought was so cool I was actually rendered speechless for a moment.

To take Gaelic for example, the vocative case is different in the masculine than the feminine, so you really have to pick one from the moment you want to say "Hello, so-and-so," regardless of what the name itself is.

That's interesting...I'd never wondered before, but is it reasonable to presume that Gaelic-speaking parents adhere more strictly to the boy-girl naming divide than English-speaking parents do?

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What really frustrates me is how suddenly a name can jump from the boy box to the girl box, like Meredith and Ariel, and everyone in the English-speaking world is supposed to keep track. Even MacKenzie is vastly more often given to girls than to boys, which makes no sense.

To take Gaelic for example, the vocative case is different in the masculine than the feminine, so you really have to pick one from the moment you want to say "Hello, so-and-so," regardless of what the name itself is.

That's interesting...I'd never wondered before, but is it reasonable to presume that Gaelic-speaking parents adhere more strictly to the boy-girl naming divide than English-speaking parents do?

MacKenzie as a girl's name? I've never come across that before. In fact, the only time I've ever seen it as a first name at all is the actor MacKenzie Crook. As you say, since it means "son of Kenneth" it makes for a somewhat unusual female name.

I can't think of any Gaelic-speaking families I know who have given opposite gender names to their children, but it is (or used to be) quite common to use feminine versions of male names, such as Dolina/ Donalda, Norma and Murdina (Donald, Norman, Murdo i.e. Dòmhnall, Tormod, Murchadh). This is most common in families who name a new child after the last person in the family who died. So, say a man called Donald dies, and the next child born in the family is a girl, she might well be called Donalda.

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I've always wanted to have a more gender-neutral name (it's very easy to do that in Chinese; my cousin has one, and so does my best friend). My name is very obviously female, and I don't feel it fits me at all; it's a very "shallow" name that literally means "nice, pretty girl". The first character is also used in the description for being a "good, obedient wife", so double the bleagh. I wouldn't have minded so much if my parents went with the homonym that meant "intelligent" instead of "nice", but their excuse was that it shared a character with names commonly taken by Buddhist monks -- which is pretty ironic since not having sex or falling in love is pretty much what I'll be doing, ehe.

It's been pretty much of a letdown to me all my life, though I doubt my parents meant for it to have that much impact -- I guess I just happen to focus more on the meaning behind names. It's gotten to the point where I am very reluctant to introduce myself, and my name feels foreign and distasteful to speak. It's just that legally changing my name would be incredibly disrespectful to my parents, so I'm stuck with trying to introduce myself by my initials, or nicknames...

On the bright side, at least my surname is fairly okay, even if it's the most common one in China, ahaha.

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