Classic Names: Boys or Girls?

See the results of this poll: For which gender do you prefer classic names?

Respondents: 15 (This poll is closed)

  • Boys: 9 (60%)
  • Girls: 3 (20%)
  • Neutral: 3 (20%)

I have to say I like classic names for boys and girls equally. I find them nice and not going to make my child stand out just for the name and not his personality. People have less assumptions when someone has a classic name. I would love to see more classic names being used for girls. It’s sad to me when I see the awful name choices given to girls these days. Hopefully it won’t last long.

Probably girls! I love [name]Lydia[/name], [name]Charlotte[/name], [name]Caroline[/name], [name]Eliza[/name], [name]Sophia[/name], [name]Ivy[/name] and several others. I love [name]Henry[/name], [name]James[/name], [name]Nathaniel[/name], and [name]Theodore[/name] for boys, too, but I’m also caught up in surname names - they combine classic elegance with trendiness, I think.

I, too, prefer classic and vintage names on both boys and girls, but I can understand the appeal of other styles, too, especially surnames on boys.

Take care!

I thought about a post I made awhile back on another site’s forum on a topic in which the subject was about having a common first and last name together, which leads to me talking about in my opinion an exception to how a lot of us are less hesitant about using a common name for a boy than for a girl.

If I had a common last name, it would be the other way around for me in general for these reasons (mostly from a pragmatic perspective involving the problems with very common full names):

  1. The probability of a female keeping the same last name all her life is lower than for a male (due to marriage), and thus while a man will most likely have the same full name all his life a woman is likely to take a new last name upon marriage.

  2. Generally the most popular girl names represent a smaller percentage of the births than the top boy names, and the latter is more likely to be popular across time while the former is more subject to changes over the years. (When figuring out if a common first/last name combo is too common or not you should also keep in mind the popularity across all age groups and not just the child’s.)

  3. I don’t know how accurate this is, but it seems the probability of (insert common first and last name combo here) being shared with someone negative (wanted for a crime, bad credit, etc.) is higher for a male than for a female. (On the other hand, a counterexample I can recall is [name]Susan[/name] [name]Smith[/name] who murdered her children back in the '90s.)