I agree with what the above posters have said! There are a fair few name trends that show up for girl’s names and not boy’s names.
I’d reference this post that @tfzolghadr made, which I think explain the point quite clearly:
https://forum.nameberry.com/t/masculine-names-for-girls/241084/30?u=elliewilbury
in summary, this post is stating that the trend of genderbending names extends in one direction— masculine names on girls— and not in the other. This is one example of a naming trend that mostly applies to female names.
This post:
received a fair amount of positive comments (including my own)
while this post:
garnered overwhelmingly negative responses (again, including my own!) which I think illustrates it pretty clearly?
Another is nature names. On NB I think most nature names are fairly unisex, but in real life a male Sage or Lilac or, heaven forbid, Hummingbird, would be highly uncommon (at least in my experience)! Parents can get braver and braver with their nature names on girls, and little Wildroses and Nightingales and so on may keep popping up, but nature names on boys is a far more limited number.
Then there are virtue names. A male Patience or Joy is unheard of (again, in my experience) but are fairly commonplace on girls— or, at least, wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. @seawillow explain it well in this post:
https://forum.nameberry.com/t/unique-names-you-wish-were-used-more-often/371444/2?u=elliewilbury
and of course all of these trends that only apply to girls’ names do so for the reason of internalized misogyny— but that, of course, is another issue
and if we’re going to get into that, I think NB does a good job of treating nature and occasionally virtue names as wholly unisex, and I try my best to, but genderbending names is still getting there! I am an offender of that as well, as you saw above in the Caspian and Jennifer posts, but NB is working on it and there are plenty of users who aren’t blind to internalized misogyny and who bring up the issue! so we’re getting there.
sorry for rambling ![]()