My post on the thread about nicknames (and two opposite thoughts on the subject forming) got me thinking about how there seems to be different but opposing philosophies in another area: on how “masculine” or “feminine” names should sound. This is true for both genders. For boys, there seems to be an increased acceptability for softer-sounding names (e.g. two of my favorites, [name]Gabriel[/name] and [name]Rowan[/name]) along with an increase in super-masculine names (e.g. [name]Colt[/name] and [name]Gunnar[/name]). With girls there are both the popular unisex/boyish names and the super-feminine ones (take a look at the #1 name in the U.S. for 2009 for an example of the latter).