Apparently, you shouldn’t name your daughter “Barbie” unless you want her to grow up to be an airhead. A study, reported in the Guardian, claims that names have a powerful influence on social expectations — they report a significant effect in lowering exam scores based on whether the student’s name is classifiable as coming from a distinct ethnic/socioeconomic class, and further claim that the femininity of a name has a negative correlation with performance in math and science.
It’s somewhat odd. For one thing, they calculated a femininity score for various names based on letter and sound combinations—”Isabella” is the most feminine name, while “Abigail” comes out near the bottom. I don’t know any male Abigails, and Grace and Ashley, two other names in the list with low femininity scores, don’t sound particularly macho to me.
On the whole, people judged to have more traditional names such as Rachel and Robert did extremely well. More alternative names scored badly. Breeze, for example, was given 16 out of 100, while Christopher received full marks. ‘A name is part of an impression package,’ said Mehrabian. ‘Parents who make up bizarre names for their children are ignorant, arrogant or just foolish.’
Eh. It sounds like traditional conservative bigotry to me. If it holds up, though, it’s an interesting example of the way cultural biases can affect performance on supposedly bias-free examinations. I wouldn’t be too surprised if it’s valid, though: I know that when I grade exams and papers, I consciously avoid looking at the name on the exam until it’s time to record the scores in the gradebook, and I often grade from back to front to make that easier to do. That’s not to avoid bias from the femininity of the names, though, but because I know the students and want to avoid preconceptions.
I do have to note, though, that a) we named our daughter Skatje, and b) the author of the report is named “Anushka” (which sounds nice to me), and one of the teachers interviewed is named “Edyta” (an unfamiliar name, and now I suppose I’m going to imagine every Edyta I meet is a schoolteacher. Or not.)
(via Unhindered by talent)
I have heard Ashley used as a male name, although it definitely brings a full nose of Austen, or Bronte, to the palate.
If a person doesn’t like their first name, they can always use their first two initials.
Sounds pretty ‘Woo’ to me.
Anyone have a link to the study? It would be interesting to see if they corrected for income or other factors in their determination. With the idea being that maybe people who misspell their child’s name on a birth certificate aren’t as capable of educating their children to begin with?
Just a thought.
Our university had us enter our student IDs (an 8 digit number) on all exam papers instead of our names. Professors were allegedly not able to figure out which student had which number. All results, except for the final degree classification, were then posted according to the same number so that you could hide your shame from your classmates…
It sounds much more like cultural biases than any correlation between the name and the actual development of the individual. I would be more interested to see if:
1) More exotic/unusual names, is there a correlation between those names and working class families, single parent households, and/or immigrant (ELL/ESL) households.
2) Is there evidence that educators and parents haven’t been buying in to the “girls don’t do math, she has a very girly name ergo she doesn’t do math” stereotype.
A few years ago I read about a study where they sent out 5,000 (or more but 5,000 sticks in my head) resumes. They had identical skills and educational backgrounds, experience, etc. The only difference was that some of the resumes had names like John, David, Sarah, Amy, and others had names like Moesha, and other “African” or “ethic” sounding names. They found that the resumes with traditional names got call backs five times more often then those with “ethnic” names.
Don’t forget Ashley from “Gone With the Wind.” HORDES of boys named “Ashley” the year that book came out, poor guys. I also had an Ashley living in my basement for a year or so, and his wife claims he’s ALSO male, and I’m willing to believe her.
All that said, the existence of other kinds of bias based on peoples’ names.. racial, gender, “furrin”, whatever… is well-established. My favorite study on the subject was the one that sent identical resumes, one named “Leroy” and one named “John” or something, to the same job ads, to see who got more interviews. John got a LOT more interviews than Leroy.
“Breeze, for example, was given 16 out of 100, while Christopher received full marks.”
So I guess my degree is meaningless, then. Bugger.
Hain’t gon’ read that there article but just thought I’d mention the possibility that whatever measured differences do exist between people with “normal” names and people with “bizarre” names could have less to do with societal expectations and more to do with the fact that hippies call their children “River Phoenix”. Being the child of a hippie, a crack addict, a born again christian, a wiccan, etc. may mean at least two things: 1) one’s name is more likely to be bizarre, and 2) one grows up to be an adult who was born to a hippie, or a crack addict, or a born again christian, or a wiccan, …
Praps that’s in the article. If not, the authors are silly people.
Hmmm, Anushka, Russian diminutive form of Anna, but in this case I think it’s a different name altogether. Anushka Asthana is of Indian descent. Edyta is a Polish name, I think…
I remember my mom saying that she thought Ashley was a “hyper-feminine” name and would never saddle a girl with it, bu I think it’s pretty. (Which could mean she was right?) I guess being saddled with an easily-mangled name makes me stronger. Sort of a “Boy Named Sue” thing in reverse.
A study should be done to determine how “Special K” rates on the femininity scale. I suspect it would show that most people have a pre-conceived notion that I am low in fat.
I like Isabella as well, but opted for the less common(and arguably more masculine) Isobel.
Ashley was originally a male name. As was Leslie and Vivian.
Maybe it’s because Spanish is my native language, but the femininity rating seems right to me. I think a big part of it is the ending. Names ending with “a” (or having many “a” sounds in it) were rated higher than names with the “eh” sound in them.
As someone who has gone by “Bob” for most of my life (and not willingly, my mother called me Bobby, and my friends from Junior High shortened it to Bob which then stuck. I prefer Robert, but you rarely get to choose what people call you) I certainly wonder what effect that has had on my development. People seem to have some pretty strongly conceived notions of what a “Bob” is supposed to look like, and how he should act.
I think if anything choosing a unique or less used name might free your child from such stigmas (although how strong they are I don’t know). At least it might give them a better sense of individuality. If I ever have children they will not be named Sam or Sarah.
Yup. Bro’s name is Ashley.
But gee I guess your name DOES matter cause he and I (Abigail) both went into math/science careers. And we’re BOTH born in April! AND I MET A TALL, DARK STRANGER TODAY!!!!
Creepy :P
Though it must have been my girly first name (Stacey) that kept me out of engineering, and in a nice girly science like biology.
hehehehehe!!!!
My SCUBA teacher was named Laurel–now I kind of idly wonder what the Marine Corps was like for him with such a stereotypically female name.
Hi, PZ!!!
It seems to something similar or a form of stereotype threat effect. Of course, the study must be checked for artifacts and methodological errors, but it seems to me, at least, plausible.
These phenomena have been studied by Social Psychologists like Claude Steele and others in other situations involving race and gender stereotypes.
Just as an illustration:
Thin Ice: Stereotype Threat and Black College Students
by Claude M. Steele (The Atlantic Monthly | August 1999)
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/199908/student-stereotype
Stereotype threat in classroom settings: The interactive effect of domain identification, task difficulty and stereotype threat on female students’ maths performance
Keller, Johannes
British Journal of Educational Psychology, Volume 77, Number 2, June 2007 , pp. 323-338(16)
Sounds like common cause to me. I have no doubt that “Breeze” has spent his whole life being told by his parents that science can’t tell you everything.
Of course the best male Ashley ever is in the Evil Dead movies.
Good Ash, Bad Ash… I’m the guy with the gun.
I took a lot of time and consideration with naming my kids– and more “normal” names and “oddball” names ended up split evenly between them. I doubt that unless you name your kid something like Lucifer, Cookie, or Adolph that the name is going to affect matters too much.
I’d imagine a last name would have a much greater effect. Blast me for not thinking to make them all be Kennedys, haha!
Is it social expectations, or is it the parents? If you’re the kind of dumbass who gives your kids the most trendy names, I gotta hand it to you — you probably shouldn’t be having kids, and you’re going to screw them up.
Amen to that, Dustin. I’m sick of parents who wanted kids for boutique-y reasons. And sick even more of those who treat their kids of extensions of their own egos.
People are sometimes surprised when they meet me and have only seen my name — Mya — because I’m white (like, practically glow-in-the-dark — summer sucks when you burn in 15 minutes). My parents shouldn’t have listened to my grandmother when they were trying to figure out how to spell Maya. Or Maia, or Maija. Or maybe it’s Maiju in Finnish, I forget. That’s the one they wanted, though.
There’s a lot of interesting stuff out there on the socioeconomic consequences of naming [Freakonmics (the book) had a chapter on this] but a lot of it suffers from correlation=causation.
And Robert*, you can choose what people call you, if you try. Takes a while, but I’ve finally gotten my entire family to call me Mya (it’s my middle name, and much better than Karen, which I went by for my first 18 years.) Just gently correct them, sign everything with Robert, don’t respond when they use Bob.
* See? I called you Robert.
Oh, and Edyta is definitely Polish. I have a colleague who was born in Poland whose sister is an Edyta. She’s a journalist.
Hmm, maybe this depends on the culture, and this could be correlated with other cultural biases, like the fixation the Japanese have with blood type. They think that blood type makes your personality type.
I have come to think that it’s just a bit less silly than astrological signs, because they all so really believe in it, and their culture is so permeated by this (you can’t find any Japanese person’s profile, famous or not, without their blood type info), that I think since they are babies they are implicitly told by society what their personalities “are”, so many of them actually pick up traits of these blood type-personalities without even knowing.
That’s I think a reasonable hypothesis. Even the most no-nonsense Japanese people I’ve met say they don’t really believe it, but “I mean, sometimes it’s true” (yeah, like praying).
Oh, and also, I’ve been told that among Japanese people the great majority only share 3 or so types of blood, so if true, only 3 types of personality to choose from. I don’t know how true this is, though. You guys and gals should know better and inform me.
I guess I should have said “so inform me”, instead of “and inform me”, which could sound a bit rude if read too quickly and out of context. I should also have added a “please”. No edit sucks!
In the UK, Ashley is much more commonly a male name, so it seems pretty masculine to me!
To be honest, if I heard someone was called Ashley, I think I’d be more likely to assume they were male than female. Probably something to do with Ashley Cole, English footballer
In many of my college courses we were instructed not to put our names on our papers (especially in those classes which were subjectively graded). Instead we used our student ID numbers (which I always hated because it was my SSN). The professors always explained that they wanted to be able to remain objective when grading papers and not knowing whose paper it was helped that.
I don’t think it really mattered, because I’m sure the teachers started associating a particular ID with a particular person as the semester went along.
I was also amused to know that my first name (Jeremy) is not a male only name. I’ve now known two females with my name — though they both spell it “Jeramy” which I guess looks a bit more feminine. However, I notice that Firefox thinks it’s a misspelling =)
Interestingly enough, I have just read another take on this issue, written by a teacher in a British high school. His opinion is that parents who give their kids traditional names such as Robert or Rosemary are higher-income types who care about their offsprings’ education, whereas parents who name their kids after the current most popular footballer (Wayne, Becks) or pop star (Jade, Mel) tend to be shallow chavs who don’t care about their kids’ education. IOW, the name itself is not the cause of poor academic performance, but merely one indicator among many of the social class, and therefore academic expectations, of the family concerned.
There’s one other point I think needs to be made, PZ (what’s the “Z” for, BTW?), and that’s America tends to be more liberal than the UK with its child-naming conventions. Why this is, I’m not sure, but Brits tend to name their kids either traditionally (I’m an Anthony, for example), or after pop culture icons of the time, whereas Yanks tend to be more imaginative. More research is needed on this idea, though.
Yeah, something about that Ashlee name. If it has had the hypothesized effect on this poor soul, I shudder (I’m actually doing that as we speak) to think what kind of femininity this Ashlee might have exhibited. Or maybe she would have tried “maths and physics” if her name was Jessie, or something.
This has to be a really ephemeral and localised (at least to the country of origin) study, since the popularity of names certainly appears to vary over time and from country to country.
I always remember how American colleagues were totally surprised when my office mate Laurie went to visit them: they had prepared themselves to receive a female, but instead were greeted by a bearded male. Likewise, I was more than a little surprised to discover that Robin, in the US, tends to be a female name rather than that of a male. What strange creatures you are :-)
Hmmm… and I wonder where the name “George” appears on this list? I know where I’d stick it…
My sister is Abigail and my brothers middle name is Ashley so I consider them feminine and masculine respectively. I agree with Grax, again I haven’t read the article but generally if you call your child `Barbie’ or `Chardonnay’ you’re unlikely to be pushing your child academically. Personally I was named after Bach…
How about guys? Mine is Michael, Michel in french, and I am pictured beside my brother Rocky (on left) here
My wife (named Pashanta – she was born on a bus following the Grateful Dead) and I enjoy hobbling our children with difficult names, We named our sons Malachi, Leif, and Darwin, and named our daughter Zimzy. And that doesn’t even touch on the middle names. It just gets worse.
Is this a UK study? In the melting pot that is the US, it may be more difficult to categorize some names as “traditional” (code word “Anglo”) — and of course “traditional” names will vary state-by-state, depending on which ancestoral nationalities dominate the region.
(From someone who can only expect her name to be spelled correctly in the Scandinavian midwest.)
Schoolteacher? One of the professional dancers on “Dancing with the Stars is named Edyta. The first picture of her I could find on the web is http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2006/features/qa/060925/joey_lawrence2.jpg It seems fairly conservative compared to what I saw of her on TV.
Gotta love all the classism in this thread. “People who name their children Chanterelle smoke crack and don’t give a shit about education.” Nice. You ever stop to think that it’s exactly that sort of prejudice that creates this situation in the first place?
Sheesh, I turn my back for five minutes and y’all turn into a bunch of republicans…
Before Margaret beat me to it, I was going to point out Edyta Sliwinska from Dancing with the Stars. You wouldn’t be thinking schoolmarm if you’d been watching her. The outfits she wears too. Very hot. The name, like her, is Polish.
I don’t know any male Abigails
Hmmm… and I wonder where the name “George” appears on this list? I know where I’d stick it…
I had a friend in high school so unhappy by her given name “Abigail” that she willingly went by “George”. Definitely feminine, and none of our other friends so much as blinked about calling her George. Confused the hell out of people reading the cast list of the plays she was in, though…..
I had a friend in high school so unhappy by her given name “Abigail” that she willingly went by “George”. Definitely feminine, and none of our other friends so much as blinked about calling her George.
See, I’d just think she was named after Nancy Drew’s friend, George Fayne. Who, incidentally, was supposed to be a tomboy… I suppose that proves the article true!
This is a good place to explore names.
So people judge kids by their goofy names, instead of judging the parents? <Spock voice>Not logical.</Spock voice> “Breeze”? ARGH! What next? “Dweezil”? “Moon Unit”? “Apple”?
Edyta is the Polish version of Edith.
When I see “Mya”, I think of this. — Yes, the name is Maija in Finnish (j as in Skatje or Sonja).
15? FIFTEEN? Five. Yes, it does suck when I forget to take sunscreen. Good that I like heat, at least.
The French keep Vivian and Vivianne apart. Not even pronounced the same.
Zachary?
It’s more liberal than most of the rest of the world in that respect.
My name was deliberately chosen to be international, so speakers of the big European languages can all pronounce it (…in their different ways). (They’ll have enough trouble with the surname, after all.) It’s quite rare over here, but not so rare as to be considered goofy. I was already teased for everything else, so… :-)
So people judge kids by their goofy names, instead of judging the parents? <Spock voice>Not logical.</Spock voice> “Breeze”? ARGH! What next? “Dweezil”? “Moon Unit”? “Apple”?
Edyta is the Polish version of Edith.
When I see “Mya”, I think of this. — Yes, the name is Maija in Finnish (j as in Skatje or Sonja).
15? FIFTEEN? Five. Yes, it does suck when I forget to take sunscreen. Good that I like heat, at least.
The French keep Vivian and Vivianne apart. Not even pronounced the same.
Zachary?
It’s more liberal than most of the rest of the world in that respect.
My name was deliberately chosen to be international, so speakers of the big European languages can all pronounce it (…in their different ways). (They’ll have enough trouble with the surname, after all.) It’s quite rare over here, but not so rare as to be considered goofy. I was already teased for everything else, so… :-)
Being more liberal about names is a continent-wide attitude, not just for the United States. Portugal is much more conservative (they have a list of acceptable names, even) than Brazil.
Dead Like Me’s protagonist was called George. I enjoyed that show.
Isabella *is* a lovely name, and in fact that’s what we named our daughter. It was my wife’s idea, and after some debate she won me over with the name choice when she was expecting (I did get to pick her second name though!)
However, for the sake of disclosure, I must say we are Spanish speakers at home, which defintely affects our choice of names.
She just finished first grade now, and she won first prize on her science project a few weeks ago.
I had a classmate named Anita but it was spelled Georgia.
In Japan, my students are always shocked that I’m male. They think Jeremy is a girl’s name. Go figure.
Btw, for what someone above said, they only measure the four major blood types, A, B, AB, and O. I’ve never heard of any other letters being involved, Japan or elsewhere.
This sounds like something dredged up from a
“branding in advertising” lecture given to business
students—”
“Choosing the right brand name is critical to the success
of your
productson or daughter!”This is what happens when people watch tooooo much
teeeeeveeeeee…..so now a bunch of tv ad-dazed
zombies are going to drag the rest of us into accepting
their limited thought patterns?
No thanks…I’ll try do my best to see each person on
their own terms, rather than take the lazy way out…
Because that is what this “you better choose a good brand
name for your kid or he’s going to suffer!!” crap is-
bowing to intellectual laziness in the same way the
Intelligent Design backers are.
From the article:
Made up names like Condoleezza?
Damn html.
Link above.
I suspect that names are standing as a proxy here for a whole host of other social factors – income, education, etc etc
I’ll be interested in seeing the actual study on publication – it’s going to be in the Journal of Human Resources, an economics journal. Here’s a better article about it then the Guardian one: http://www.asbj.com/2005/08/0805newsanalysis.html
Also to be clear — the section of the article that PZ posted *isn’t Figlio’s work or conclusions*. It’s another researchers, Albert Mehrabian, from his book Baby Name Report Card. PZ — you might want to make a note of that, since lots of commentors seem to be judging Mr. Figlio’s work based on Mr. Mehrabian’s work here.
Of course, anybody who knows of two or three classes you’re enrolled in can then easily figure out which number is yours in that scheme. They changed the student IDs halfway through my college years from social security number (painfully stupid–why even bother trying to pretend that the SSN is a useful secret for authentication?) to a universally unique identifier like that one to “protect” our privacy.
The best scheme I’ve seen is one that one that my computer organization professor came up with: Simply have the computer generate random words from a dictionary and associate them with students. Students get their random word identifiers at the beginning of class (on a per class basis), so there’s no cross-referencing to be done. Words are easier to remember as well.
The only woman I ever knew named Edyta was a wonderful co-worker who was a Holocaust survivor. She proudly wore her Auschwitz tattoo number on her forearm. She spelled her name Eydita. Nicole Brown Simpson’s mother’s first name was Juditha, pronouced yoodeeta, is a parallel variant of the English name Judith.
If you want to have some geeky fun go to the Social Security Website @ http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/
The site ranks the top 1000 names given in any year by frequency.
Parents are not terribly imaginative.
In fact, yes, I do think her parents — or, perhaps more probably, whatever bureaucrat actually wrote the birth certificate — are ignorant and foolish. If they’re already going to name their daughter “with sweetness” (con dolcezza — an instruction in some works of music), why can’t they be bothered not to confuse c and e and not to end up with a silly eezz?!?
On the other hand, though, the world would be better off if they had got their wish and their daughter would have become a professional pianist instead of a sovietologer.
In fact, yes, I do think her parents — or, perhaps more probably, whatever bureaucrat actually wrote the birth certificate — are ignorant and foolish. If they’re already going to name their daughter “with sweetness” (con dolcezza — an instruction in some works of music), why can’t they be bothered not to confuse c and e and not to end up with a silly eezz?!?
On the other hand, though, the world would be better off if they had got their wish and their daughter would have become a professional pianist instead of a sovietologer.
Okay, my given name is Billy and I’m female. Pre-women’s lib female. Helped me throughout my life – everyone just assumed I was male when they saw it spelled, so I was never stereotyped and was able to have my work speak for me. I think that is why girls are given gender neutral names (Madison comes to mind) now – so they will evade the stereotype. In college, I roomed with an Andy, Marty, and Sandy – all female!! Of course, they were shortened names for feminine ones, but we all benefitted.
I wonder how “Gloria Josephine”, who by all indications is set to be both math-and-science oriented and quite a tomboy, albeit with an anomolous fondness for pretty clothes, would score on that. <_<
Well, which came first? Presumably, parents are just as influenced by these name impressions, and they may even use that in choosing names. A mother who names her child Emma may be doing because she wants to have a genteel, non-scientific daughter. Presumably that same mother will be less likely to encourage her daughter in pursuing the sciences. You can’t really blame the name for that, because the name is just one of many symptoms of the parents’ influence.
What I meant above was that from those four groups of blood, the great majority of Japanese (and maybe other Asian peoples) share only 3, and even among them, the majority share only 2 blood types, so for the majority of people, there is only 2 or 3 types of “personality” that they can identify with. So the odds that someone will guess your blood type by your personality are much better than someone guessing your astro sign.
Damn no edit! haha
So actually I was asking about that. I don’t know how true it is that Japanese and/or other Asian peoples have in their majority only 2 or 3 blood types, while the fourth only a small minority have due to their (I should probably say “our” race). I have heard it from at least 2 somewhat credible sources, so I was just asking people here who should know better than me.
Groovy.
I have a male cousin with the middle name of Ashley.
———————————-
In my small high school(graduating class was 75 people) there were three ‘Linda’s; they were tall thin blondes. It was a slight mind switch when I went to college and ran into short brunette ‘Linda’s.
———————————–
I had several male coworkers named ‘Lynn’.
For years I’ve been convinced that names have had influences on how people are perceived. I never had the research to back this up, and certainly it’s a subtle influence. But people do show biases towards people based on their names.
I knew a girl in high school who was named Bambie and she was treated in a certain manner. She changed her name in high school and picked a name that did not fit in with the mostly rich white kids in that school. She went with Roxie.
Kids were just brutal to that girl.
I have since found out that she’s a fairly successful businesswoman in New England. I’m glad about that.
My first name, Eric, I think gave me a bit of a leg up, it was a pretty common name among my peers in school.
phat
maybe there’s a correlation between poor name choice and parental stupididy
I’m surprised that no one has brought up the book “Freakonomics” by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. They looked at a study done in CA and came to the following conclusion:
“What the California names data suggest is that an overwhelming number of parents use a name to signal their own expectations of how successful their children will be. The name isn’t likely to make a shard of difference”
They also have a blog http://www.freakonomics.com/blog. Whether or not you agree with the conclusions – its an interesting read.
…names have a powerful influence on social expectations — they report a significant effect in lowering exam scores based on whether the student’s name is classifiable as coming from a distinct ethnic/socioeconomic class, and further claim that the femininity of a name has a negative correlation with performance in math and science.
I think the ethnic observation is a truism, although ‘ethnics’ (such as my parents) who grow up in a Western society and become assimilated into that society tend to give their children Western European names.
On the other hand, strange names do IMO reflect something bizarre on the part of the parents. Sadly, most of the Jaydens, Braydens and Haydns, Taylahs, Allannahs and Tanieshas, up where I used to live in country Victoria (Australia) do tend to belong to mothers (father often absent) of low socio-economic status or on almost permanent welfare who are frequently obese, smoking, fast-food junkies (Personal observation 2002-03, 2006, unpublished) who scream at their kids and cannot adequately control them, while the miserable story of murdered Jaidyn Leske typifies everything that is wrong with the parents of these kids.
I can appreciate how name and perception thereof might alter scores for subjective topics (like History exams for example), but less so in things like maths, where there IS a right answer and where working steps taken can also attract partial marks. Unless, as someone said, the kids with weird and ditzy names have weird and ditzy parents who can’t be bothered to give a stuff about their education, while the kids with ‘conservative’ names have more ‘traditionalist’ parents who are more inclined to take interest in their kid’s welfare.
Of course when you’re filthy rich you can do anything. Hence Dweezil and Moon Unit Zappa, River Phoenix, Suri Cruise-Holmes, Fifi, Peaches and Trixibelle Geldof… the list goes on.
I betcha the parents who give their children unusual names are typically of above-average intelligence (as measured by IQ).
Sometimes smart people do stupid things. Sometimes an odd choice isn’t a stupid choice. Other times, it is.
And by the way, it’s pronounced az-WEE-pay
We’ve covered this at GNXP:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/05/do-girly-names-obstruct-scientific.php
It is either a fluke due to incredibly small sample size, which increases the variance in outcomes (e.g., only 1 or 2 Isabellas in the whole sample), or may not be real — a co-blogger searched the Berkeley Facebook for the various names and found no correlation between femininity of name and choice of major.
I was hoping the study would’ve been out by now, but it’s still in press.
The gender of a name is obviously cultural, and it varies with time and place. It helps to avoid confusing sex and gender. English doesn’t have a lot of gender, but if you mix up sex and gender it is really tricky reading pornography in many languages where the slang names for genitals have genders other than their sex.
Wasn’t there a British convention based on whether one used a Y or an I? I remember Gayle (Gayle Borden founded Borden Foods) was male, but Gail is a feminine name. In one rather funny book by, I think, David Lodge the Robin/Robyn gender distinction led to a false impression of the sex of one of the parties with amusing results.
I think the French put an E at the end to make a name (or adjective) feminine, so Claud should be a man’s name; Claude should be a woman’s name. At least that’s what they told me.
My favorite non-obvious gender name was Sarahn, an attempt at a masculine form of the feminine name Sarah. I knew him in high school, but I tended to call him Sauron. He seemed pretty well adjusted, but then again, he would hang around with me.
Oh god, I’m having too much fun with that baby name ranking site that shows how popular baby names were in what years – it’s so funny that when I plug in all my friends’ names, they were all at peak popularity in the early 80s (when we were born) and are very much not so now. And these are normal, average names like “Erin” and “Heidi”.
Speaking of “ignorant, arrogant or just foolish,” I’d just like to thank everyone who chimed in with the “people who give their kids weird names are dumb/spacey” stereotype for illustrating exactly the sort of bias that would lead to kids with those names being taken less seriously. Anecdotal evidence, to be sure, but nevertheless the irony is smothering.
It’s not just in French that you can differentiate male and female versions of a name by the spelling. Long ago in the Okeefenokee Swamp [Walt Kelly’s, not the USCGS’s], Miz Beaver (I think it was) was showing off her new baby girl, who had not been named yet. When asked by another character what the name was likely to be, she replied that they were thinking of calling her Honey Bunny Ducky Downy Sweety Chicken Pie Li’l Everlovin’ Jelly Bean.
“Very nice,” says the other, “but ain’t that more of a boy’s name?”
“Not if you spells it with a final ‘e'”.
And nobody here has heard of the author of the book “The Natural Superiority of Women”? Ashley Montagu. Male. Never got around to reading it — why spend time on silly notions? — but his book “Touching” was quite good, as I recall.
‘A name is part of an impression package,’ said Mehrabian. ‘Parents who make up bizarre names for their children are ignorant, arrogant or just foolish.’
This is surely the pot calling the kettle black. Even if this study is valid (which I have grave doubts about), those parents couldn’t have known that, so what’s the basis for Mehrabian’s judgment?
On the other hand, strange names do IMO reflect something bizarre on the part of the parents. Sadly, most of the Jaydens, Braydens and Haydns, Taylahs, Allannahs and Tanieshas, up where I used to live in country Victoria (Australia) do tend to belong to mothers (father often absent) of low socio-economic status or on almost permanent welfare who are frequently obese, smoking, fast-food junkies (Personal observation 2002-03, 2006, unpublished) who scream at their kids and cannot adequately control them, while the miserable story of murdered Jaidyn Leske typifies everything that is wrong with the parents of these kids.
Personal observation, 2007: you’re a racist ahole.
maybe there’s a correlation between poor name choice and parental stupididy
More likely there’s a correlation between poor spelling and stupidity.
I roomed with an Andy, Marty, and Sandy – all female!!
You might be interested in
http://www.cse.unr.edu/~sushil/class/ai/papers/coffeehouse.html — a discussion among Chris, a physics student, Pat, a biology student, and Sandy, a philosophy student, about determining gender.
Sheesh, I turn my back for five minutes and y’all turn into a bunch of republicans…
Indeed, a bunch of provincial stupid racist arrogant aholes — apes with degrees.
truthmachine – the person you quote doesn’t mention race at all.
Perhaps you should rename yourself supposition machine.
Rodrigo Veras beat me to it at #16… Sounds like a “stereotype threat” effect to me.
SG originally was going to be named “Wilhelmina” after her father, but got changed to “Florence” instead…Whew!
SG’s husband’s name is “Lyn”, but he’s British..that explains it!
SG
Amusing story: My wife and I named our son Twain, which for some reason many people seem to have trouble pronouncing properly.
My sister once asked my teenage nephew if he knew who we had named our son for. He replied, “Shania?”
Apparently education of American literature is sorely lacking.
(Incidentally, I was pushing for Thor, but my wife overruled that one. Although if we had had a girl, we were going to name her Freya.)
Or because she’s in France, where (for, presumably, some reason) that name is currently fashionable.
I thought Sandy came from Sandra? Do some derive it from Alexander, or what? (Of course Sandra is from Alexandra, but few are aware of that.)
Where does that name come from? Cree or something?
That works often, but not always. Some men’s names have an inbuilt e that you can’t get rid of, such as Claude. I can’t remember seeing that one as a woman’s name.
Well, would you confuse parents and their kids? I wouldn’t.
Or because she’s in France, where (for, presumably, some reason) that name is currently fashionable.
I thought Sandy came from Sandra? Do some derive it from Alexander, or what? (Of course Sandra is from Alexandra, but few are aware of that.)
Where does that name come from? Cree or something?
That works often, but not always. Some men’s names have an inbuilt e that you can’t get rid of, such as Claude. I can’t remember seeing that one as a woman’s name.
Well, would you confuse parents and their kids? I wouldn’t.
Why “Twain” and not “Mark”?
Why “Twain” and not “Mark”?
Hmmmm…what’s in a name, as some scribe penned.
I’m slightly tempted to take a name survey at multiple soup kitchens, & see how many ‘traditional’ names there are.
& naming your child ‘Candi’ might end in obesity.
Which is exactly what children will encounter in the classroom.
Children are cruel to those with ‘strange’ names, and teachers and so forth never do anything to stop it.
David:
No. From this. :-)
Kaleberg: It isn’t that simple. Claude and Claudine are the masculine/feminine forms. But at least those aren’t homophones, like Michel / Michelle.
I don’t know about Isabella, but right now, in this culture, it really does suck to be named Jessica. The public associates it with Jessica Simpson – with the predictable negative connotations (and yes, they have everything to do with femininity). It seems unfair that I get tagged with her thickheadedness and immaturity, despite sharing none of her marketable physical attributes. She does just fine despite being vapid, but the only thing I’ve got going for me is my brain, and I already have an uphill battle convincing people of that just because I’m female!
Not to mention that half the dogs I know are named Jess, or Jessie. My dear friend, Jessica Simpson, and I were in high school when the singer was popular. Not a fun time.
Kim, however, is a great name. Am I a small girl in Peru? Am I a 90 year old Korean man? Perhaps I’m a 7 foot tall transexual living in Manchester. Who knows? I have a lot of fun with it.