Is there such thing as a truly unisex baby name?

care to elaborate?

the puritans loved virtue names, and the qualities that would be lovely for either sex were unisex names. “repentance” and “humility” for instance were gender-neutral, while “silence” was feminine… you can guess why.

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The K spelling is often just an international variant as well. Many languages don’t use C or CH for the K sound. In my native language for example the C doesn’t even exist (except in foreign words). Not the whole world speaks [name_f]English[/name_f], you know.

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parker is not only a silly name but beastly on a girl. parker? what next, driver? pedestrian?

they all seem very male to me. also, too last-namey.

most unisex names sound very male to my ear

i don’t see why it’s inherently a good thing that we won’t be able to differentiate people by sex from their name? it’s not as if it’ll cause sexism to disappear — it’ll simply cease to be a way to identify people on, what, a register?

not to mention how it’s one-sided. boy’s names swallowed up by girls, the tacit message being it’s better to be a boy than a girl :confused: it’s not as if the boys get a better deal in it either, having their names be unusable for the next generation.

okay, but why in america?

To be honest? There are plenty of truly unisex names. If anything I’d argue technically any name can be unisex.

This thing started when a while back girls started getting the name [name_u]Blake[/name_u], [name_u]Dylan[/name_u], [name_u]Logan[/name_u], [name_u]Tristan[/name_u], [name_u]Asher[/name_u], [name_u]Ashton[/name_u], [name_u]Evan[/name_u], [name_u]Wyatt[/name_u], [name_u]George[/name_u], and the list can go on and on. Interestingly enough, it never went the other way around.

There are true unisex names out there like [name_u]Alex[/name_u], [name_u]Angel[/name_u], [name_f]Keshet[/name_f], [name_u]Ren[/name_u], etc. It’s kinda sad because there are beautiful underrated gems that go unused.

Overall traditional male names on girls don’t bother me as much as they used to, but it would be real interesting to see a boy named [name_f]Elizabeth[/name_f], [name_f]Evangeline[/name_f], [name_f]Asherah[/name_f], or [name_f]Natalie[/name_f].

Oh, and another thing: Something I noticed is that this stuff usually only happens in [name_u]America[/name_u], lol.

ugh stop don’t list those very male names as girl names you’re going to give me a heart attack

^^ see above

i would say it’s a neutral thing to be able to differentiate gender by name. neither good nor bad—just what it is. names are often key to our identity, whether we want them to be or whether we want to admit they are or not. knowing enough young kids and peers who choose to go by a different, less gendered name for a hundred different reasons makes a great case for seeking a neutral name. healthier kids, less focus on gender. i don’t need to know if riley and river are boys, girls, non-binary, genderfluid.

what i was saying is that names are becoming more gender neutral as culture shifts— we’re seeing more word names, modern virtue names, nature names that aren’t gendered. anybody names. i definitely don’t see names becomes unusable for boys— after working with kids for ooof like 6 years, i’ve never heard name-based teasing. expecting a wave of sensitive and diverse gender-aware parenting as the current 20-30 year olds begin having children. more of our parenting literature will start to include gender-neutral parenting methods and childhoods. boys names on girls and girls names on boys have been around and popular since the dawn of time— it feels even less daunting today than it did to like june for a boy and finnegan for a girl :woman_shrugging:t2:

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[name_u]Charlie[/name_u] is split 50/50 in the USA.

TLDR my replies for this thread:

it seems girls poach boy’s names but never the other way around. parents seem deathly ashamed to have a girlish boy but happy enough to have a boyish girl. this means all names at a tipping point quickly decline for boys. charlie is an example of an unequivocally male name girls also use, and a nickname name to boot. this is possibly because parents traditionally saw boys as the ones that would carry on the family name and saw girl names as more decorative, thus the greater number of girls with “unique” and fashionable names vs boys with traditional names. needless to say, uhhhhh not to be like that but uhhhhm sexism.

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^^ see above

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gender-aware? as in… gender-neutral? that seems iffy. girls and boys are different, and i shouldn’t like to be treated like a male. i hate when people refer to a mixed-sex or even wholly female (!) group as “guys” for instance. makes my skin crawl. not to evoke the “i’m not like other girls XD girls are so catty i don’t wear pink” but it seems fitting here :stuck_out_tongue:

diverse gender-aware. we can treat kids like kids. are boys and girls different because we think they should be or because they are? gender is a construct :woman_shrugging:t2: everyone is entitled to being who they are authentically whether it’s the social norm or not. really just remarking on the times in popular culture. unfortunately you guys is really just vernacular, i’m sorry it makes you feel uncomfortable! i suppose “guys” though is a good example of what i’ve been saying. guys can be anyone— i just never assume a group of people, even presenting femme, all identify as girls/women. just trying not to alienate anyone! yous works just as well :sweat_smile:

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you believe the difference between men and women are wholly societally constructed? but that’s nonsense. if we have different bodies, surely we have minds wired to those bodies? for instance, women are picker with their mates not because society dictates it must be thus but because they must gestate for nine months and then breastfeed.

it’s such a shame we don’t have the plural second person anymore :frowning: in the past, we could have said “you” but fear of being impolite meant english shed the casual “thou” in favour of the more deferential “you”… much like the french “thou”.

are we into the territory of transgenderism? because you’re being silly, if so. transgenderism expresses itself in less than one in a thousand people. and don’t you think a trans person would be deeply flattered if you unthinkingly called her (let’s say she’s a woman) and her group “hiii, girlies!!” or some other similiarly gendered phrase? by having the group all declare their genders, you send the trans woman a sharp message: “i know you were born a man.”

surely if a child is raised gender-neutral, it’ll be more difficult for them to decide their own gender? and if gender is socially constructed, won’t every child raised gender-neutral identify as between the two sexes?

and again. why must gender-neutral be “male convention applied to women”? it is never the other way around, and frankly sexist.

also, am i less of a woman in jeans than in a dress? is being a woman liking pink and lipstick and such? you sound horribly regressive.

did you not consider for a minute that “guys” might alienate a significant number of women? if my female friends count as a statistically significant sample, while most don’t care a few dislike being grouped in as “you guys.”

I think [name_u]Riley[/name_u] is. Of course now I realize I meet more girl Rileys so maybe you are right. Though I would not think anything odd about a male [name_u]Riley[/name_u].