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US boy names that became girl names and vice versa

99 points xoobdev 2 hours ago 77 comments

neutronicus 1 hour ago | parent

I'm gonna credit George RR Martin with flipping Arya in the mid '90s

cortesoft 1 hour ago | parent

I feel like a lot of these can be tied to one famous person with the name causing the gender to flip.

billyp-rva 1 hour ago | parent

> Of the 42 names that moved toward girls, 34 were driven mainly by an increase among girls, rather than a decline among boys.

> Surprisingly, the same pattern held in the opposite direction. Of the 12 names that moved toward boys, 9 shifted mainly because fewer girls were receiving them, rather than because more boys were. In other words, whichever way a name moved, the biggest change usually came from girls.

This is consistent with the observation that girl's names are more dynamic.

zamadatix 17 minutes ago | parent

It seems there are lots of cases across the board where "women adopt traditionally male thing" has become the norm in this timeframe but not many where "men adopt traditionally female thing" at quite the same rate or scale.

jmaw 9 minutes ago | parent

> This is consistent with the observation that girl's names are more dynamic.

Interesting, I wonder what causes this? In the US, is more common to name the first son after the father. Given this data comes from US social security information, that definitely has an impact.

conductr 8 minutes ago | parent

I have no data but feel that boys tend to get the family names and biblical names (in US anyways). It's rare to hear of a girl named Elizabeth III or Mary Junior but quite common for those concepts in boys. So I think the boy names are heavily weighted on probably the most popular ~25 or so names. Since girl names are more free to follow whatever is fashionable at the time, trends move faster.

My son is named after his grandfather, and it's an overly common name in English (American and British). Definitely a top 3 most common for last several centuries

asimovfan 1 hour ago | parent

Stevie is a girl's name now?

petcat 1 hour ago | parent

Such a thing will often happen as the result of a celebrity having the name. For instance, famed Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks, whose real name was Stephanie.

saghm 54 minutes ago | parent

Years ago, one of the broadcasters for a Red Sox game was doing some ad read about some event Stevie Nicks was going to be at, but they read her name as "Steve Nicks" instead. Someone else in the booth corrected them, and they responded "I know him well, and I call him Steve". A fan apparently sent them a giant poster of Stevie Nicks, and the others put it up in the booth and teased him about it relentlessly during the next game.

dfxm12 53 minutes ago | parent

Interestingly enough, Lindsey, like Lindsey Buckingham, the guitarist of Fleetwood Mac, became a more popular girl's name during Fleetwood Mac's heyday.

TFNA 48 minutes ago | parent

The past tense "was" had me at least looking for an obituary. She is still very much alive

petcat 44 minutes ago | parent

I was referring to the Stephanie part in the past tense. I doubt she's gone by that name since she was a child.

But yes, Stevie is very much still alive.

deathanatos 1 hour ago | parent

With the shift happening right after the 1976–1980 square, I'd assume people named their daughter after Stevie Nicks.

Fnoord 1 hour ago | parent

I mean, this is US-centric data, but it is probably a shortening of 'Stephanie' or 'Stefanie' [1], the female variant of 'Stephan' or 'Stefan'. It stems from Greek, apparently: Stephanos. Its variant are used entirely throughout Europe, from Portugal to Russia.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie

morninglight 51 minutes ago | parent

Don't be silly.

Moon Unit is a girls name.

Stevie is a nickname for the sweetener Stevia.

jasonlotito 48 minutes ago | parent

Now? Let me introduce you to Stevie Nicks.

jeremyjh 46 minutes ago | parent

In the US, boys would abbreviate Stephen or Steven to Steve. Stevie only for a young boy.

I’m not sure what they are measuring here though - if it’s only birth certificates then I’m sure Stevie is dominated by girls for a long time.

Fnoord 1 hour ago | parent

My biggest WTF on this (as a foreigner) was the late Lindsey Graham. I always knew Lindsey/Lindsay as a female name.

Either way, peeking through the list, seems to me names which end with a vowel are usually feminine. However, there's a caveat: names end up shortened, and over time even those get shortened.

'Brit', 'Britney' for 'Brittany'.

'Gerry' or 'Geri' or 'Ger' for 'Gareth' (Dutch variant: 'Gerrit'),

'Pat', 'Patty' for 'Patrick', 'Patricia'.

'Pen', 'Penny' for 'Penelope'

'Ash' for 'Ashley'.

'Tash' or 'Tasha' for 'Natasha', 'Nata(s)cha' (a variant of Nathan/Nathaniel?)

'Toni', 'Tony', or 'Ton' for 'Antonia', 'Anton', or 'Antonius'.

Skimming through the quick examples I came up with, one thing stands out: if it ends with an 'a', feminine. I believe this stems from Latin? It also appears Brittany is a very British example, whereas say 'Tony' stems from a Catholic background. People with that background get very traditional names, but they're always practically shortened. Annoyingly, you'd have to mention your complete name on say a form, but otherwise you get a wider choice since you have like three names, and they're relatively long so more variety to pick from.

stasomatic 34 minutes ago | parent

The one that always trips me up is when a man is a Stacey.

busymom0 15 minutes ago | parent

I had to call a customer once whose name was Courtney and it tripped me up when it turned out to be a male..

bityard 6 minutes ago | parent

Growing up in the rural midwest, I had no idea Tracy could be a dude's name until I worked with one. (Great guy, btw.)

IncreasePosts 28 minutes ago | parent

Andrea, Simone, Nicola, Michele, Daniele in Italian are all male names, but English speakers would probably assume the person is female from the name alone.

Groxx 4 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

moralestapia 58 minutes ago | parent

Surprised to not see "Jordan" in there, it's the first one that came to my mind.

goda90 51 minutes ago | parent

A name I was surprised by was someone I know naming their daughter Miles/Myles, which is such a male name in my mind. It might even be based on the Latin word for soldier. It's not one I've seen used for a girl anywhere else, yet.

Terr_ 20 minutes ago | parent

Edited slightly for series spoilers:

> "Well, I wish you every joy," Miles went on [...] He managed a wink. "Name the first one after me, eh?"

> [She] grinned. "I'm not sure she'd appreciate that. Milesanna? Milesia?"

> "Milesia sounds like a disease," Miles admitted, taken aback. "In that case, don't. I wouldn't want her to grow up hating me in absentia."

-- Memory (1996) by Lois McMaster Bujold

ape4 51 minutes ago | parent

Good luck to the Perl function Text::GenderFromName()

Maybe it needs the birthday

rconti 34 minutes ago | parent

I thought you must be joking. You were not!

andix 28 minutes ago | parent

I guess it's eternally stuck in the 90s. I didn't see Perl in a long time now. 10-15 years ago it was still everywhere.

edit: No, it's stuck in the 80s: "The data comes from a 5% sampling of Social Security card applications with dates of birth from January 1980 through December 1989"

https://metacpan.org/pod/Text::GenderFromName#REGARDING-THE-...

Terr_ 14 minutes ago | parent

I'm sure there are a few competing "Falsehoods programmers believe about names" out there by now.

myself248 48 minutes ago | parent

But Jean (English name, like Jeannie) and Jean (French form of John) are entirely different names, with different pronunciations, that happen to share the same spelling.

ekzy 39 minutes ago | parent

Yep, my wife and I have the same middle name: Jean. I’m French and she’s British :)

jasonlotito 46 minutes ago | parent

Sort of reminds me of the color swap of Pink and Blue for Men and Women.

xdennis 5 minutes ago | parent

You're the victim of misinformation.

In the past there were no hard associations between sexes and gender and it was possible to find boys wearing some pink clothing, but it was never the case that people associated pink with boys and blue with girls.

There are some limited examples that contribute to the misunderstanding. For example blue is often associated with the Virgin Mary and red (not pink) was considered a manly color often worn by warriors (e.g. the British, the Romans, etc).

ecshafer 44 minutes ago | parent

There are a few names I think are being confused. Jan, short for Janice is a female name, but Jan in Central / Eastern Europe as a form of John is masculine. Jean the female name and Jean the french male name are different.

cvhc 26 minutes ago | parent

Yeah immigration and mix of similar names from different languages could also be reasons for the (at least perceived) shifts.

nostrademons 10 minutes ago | parent

This is part of what they mean by girl names driving the shift. You have a traditional ethnic name that may be masculine or feminine and has a baseline low level of popularity. Then you have a popular female name that rapidly gains and loses its popularity. The effect on the mix is that it's shifting from masculine to feminine, but really you should look at it as a newly-popular female name being layered on top of the traditional name. And you can often see this in the timescale, with a clear pop-culture trigger leading to the rising girl name.

Looking at just part of the data, I can see this with Arya (Stark, Game of Thrones), Paris (Hilton), Stevie (Nicks, of Fleetwood Mac), Dakota (Fanning), and Tatum (O'neal), and the masculine trend also relates to the fading of generationally-popular names like Jean (Silent/Boomer), Pat (Boomer), Joan (Silent/Boomer), Courtney (Gen-X/Xennial), etc.

Danox 40 minutes ago | parent

Most of the names that flip over seem to be names associated with the gentry class, many of the names seem to be neutral, soft very inoffensive names.

axus 40 minutes ago | parent

Most surprising was "Mario" becoming shared. "Maria/Mario" seemed inherently gendered, based on the last letter.

bhouston 39 minutes ago | parent

I think it says "Marlo"? Not "Mario". L, not I.

fsckboy 31 minutes ago | parent

Marlo/Marla is also inherently gendered

for people from languages that mark gender with an ending (romance languages for instance), putting the "wrong" ending something like a noun would sound odd or change the meaning

brewmarche 4 minutes ago | parent

Interestingly if I remember correctly they have different origins, Maria is a biblical name, while Mario comes from Latin (which can decline Marius to Maria, but that’s a different word)

bhouston 39 minutes ago | parent

Green to orange? Why not blue to pink? I know it is stereotypical, but it is the natural colouring.

boston_clone 35 minutes ago | parent

I'm not sure what you mean by "natural" coloring, but the association you're describing has also reversed over time; i.e., pink was considered masculine and blue was considered feminine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendered_associations_of_pink_...

fsckboy 26 minutes ago | parent

I have heard and I do believe that there are countries that use other colors for babies, but wouldn't trust wikipedia nor its selective sources on any topic like gender; wikipedia is no longer enslaved to the truth.

childev 39 minutes ago | parent

Interesting data. Nightmare color scale for the colorblind.

xnx 15 minutes ago | parent

Came here to say the same. Anyone doing data visualization should think long and hard before using something beside a line or bar chart. Almost everything else is worse in multiple ways.

ranger_danger 38 minutes ago | parent

What about Aaron -> Erin ?

libraryofbabel 25 minutes ago | parent

Aaron is Hebrew and Erin is Irish. They just happen to sound the same.

TRiG_Ireland 13 minutes ago | parent

They don't even sound the same, except in some (not all) American accents. They don't sound even remotely similar to me.

ranger_danger 6 minutes ago | parent

Interesting, they sound exactly the same to me, and I cannot even think of how they might sound different to someone else. Care to explain?

drnick1 2 minutes ago | parent

I thought they did not, but after actually vocalizing them I would say they are basically indistinguishable in real (fast) speech.

Atreiden 4 minutes ago | parent

Not when pronounced correctly as A-Aron

TRiG_Ireland 14 minutes ago | parent

To my Irish ear, these are two completely different names, not even slightly similar. (They're also etymologically unrelated.) It blew my mind when discussions on r/namenerds revealed that many Americans consider these names similar or even identical.

petemc_ 35 minutes ago | parent

There was a guy at my school named Hilary who got awful abuse for it. Always wondered why parents would do such a thing to a child.

andix 31 minutes ago | parent

It's kind of surprising that this is even allowed. A lot of countries require at least the first given name to match the gender. Some names might be deemed suitable for both genders.

Jtsummers 25 minutes ago | parent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_(name) - It's not an exclusively female name. But in the US, you can give a kid pretty much any name you want (see the names Musk gives his kids these days).

zahlman 19 minutes ago | parent

…Why would it be surprising for the USA not to have such a requirement?

triceratops 5 minutes ago | parent

We associate names ending with a vowel sound with the female gender. Other than that there's nothing gendered about "Hilary" as a first name.

BeetleB 26 minutes ago | parent

Weird comment, given that it was, not long ago, a common name for a male.

I'd wager if it weren't for Clinton, most people would still associate it with men.

zahlman 19 minutes ago | parent

How "not long ago" are you thinking of? Clinton was first a major figure in the 90s (and we also had https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fresh_Prince_of_Bel-Air ). And Clinton herself is from the baby boom generation; what male Hil(l)arys from that cohort do you have in mind?

zamadatix 12 minutes ago | parent

Looks like it flipped in ~the 40s, by the ~60s had become rarer as a male name, and was pretty much a flop as a male name after the ~80s. So Clinton was born just when it started to take off for females (and in general - it was never as common as a male name) and there should have been in the same ballpark as as many male "Hilary"s of the same age.

https://namedaisy.com/us/name/Hilary

ReptileMan 22 minutes ago | parent

Because it's there...

LorenPechtel 14 minutes ago | parent

I suspect this is a big driver of the switch. Parents that do not want to give their boys a name that will cause issues later on.

Back in school it wasn't a problem, people knew "Loren" was male, "Lauren" was female. Now, an awful lot of people don't. It's an uncommon enough name that even if you were around back when that's how it worked you very well might not have known it.

As an adult I routinely get misgendered, but it's a so-what to me.

triceratops 1 minute ago | parent

Here's my favorite "Lauren"*: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Bush

* solely because her legal, married name is Lauren Bush Lauren

rolandog 33 minutes ago | parent

I was very much shocked to see a feminine version of my name used IIRC on Dead Or Alive 4 (DOA4), not knowing the backstory: I think it was a character called Leon was promising to avenge his dead girlfriend, Rolande.

I've wondered if the women that have carried the name have liked it? In my mind, it's always sounded very blunt so as to be feminine, but I recognize I'm heavily biased when it comes to my own name.

bilsbie 28 minutes ago | parent

I’d be curious if men with female names get rejected out of a lot of job interviews since the employer may have thought they chose a female for DEI and then a man shows up?

Or maybe it’s a good way to get your foot in the door in todays job market.

lkramer 18 minutes ago | parent

Probably more likely that they don't get the interview because the person reviewing their CV assumed they were a woman...

sota_pop 25 minutes ago | parent

Most interesting thing that stands out to me is the number of names that appear to be what I would consider an abbreviation of a more traditional name.

e.g. “Pat” is cited, but doesn’t specify whether that refers to Patricia or Patrick.

twoodfin 18 minutes ago | parent

These are presumably from Social Security registrations, so reflecting official given names.

Another interesting analysis would be the movement back and forth between full names and their associated common diminutives.

jmaw 6 minutes ago | parent

Yes, the data comes from the US Social Security Administration from 1936–2025

Source: The expandable "How we measured it" section at the bottom of the page

kibwen 10 minutes ago | parent

Common nicknames eventually just become given names on their own, like "Jack" or "John" or "Alex".

Aperocky 20 minutes ago | parent

I'm just really surprised that 21% of Lynn's are boys.

9991 17 minutes ago | parent

> Failed to verify your browser > > Vercel Security Checkpoint | iad1::1793644520-hvXR6jD3A6jJoFcEhxLm7uNyDy9O2Ibl

Super informative article.

jtommy14 14 minutes ago | parent

I've noticed more girls are being named Parker these days. My 1yo son is named Parker. He's holding the line.

nkrisc 10 minutes ago | parent

The trend of surnames as given names is stranger to me than traditional gender reversal of names.

scottyah 2 minutes ago | parent

It's super hard to keep track of, I have an app that's designed to help couples name their baby, and I always wanted to stay away from hard-defined gender stuff, but people still want boy/girl categories. So many are both, but to varying degrees. I ended up using a boy/girl/unisex selector, and had Jev tag all the names. It's especially when dealing with other countries, languages, and customs. At the end of the day, it's mostly easier for the user to just swipe left on a name rather than try to pre-eliminate it from their pool.