I was just wondering would you ever give a boy a girls name? I mean, whether you like it or not girls are being given ‘boys’ names nowadays ([name]Rory[/name], [name]Eliot[/name], [name]Frank[/name] etc) but boys aren’t getting given girl names to my knowledge. I’m not talking about unisex names or softer sounding boys names but a name you’d actually consider only a girls name. I know a boy named [name]Erin[/name] and for years to me [name]Erin[/name] was a unisex name until I found out it was pretty much a girls name. However it still doesn’t sound odd on him. What girls name would you ever consider giving a boy or have you? And is there even such thing as a ‘girls name’ or ‘boys name’ - where do you draw the line? Thanks
P.S Be warned this thread turns into quite a complicated debate, I only started it to talk about the names.
There are definitely such things are “boys names” and “girls names”.
[name]Madison[/name] means “[name]Son[/name] of [name]Maude[/name]”, it is a boys name. [name]Regina[/name] means “[name]Queen[/name]”, it is a girls name.
I would not use a boys name on a girl, nor would I use a girls name on a boy.
Boys have boys names, girls have girls names.
A lot of boys names are now unisex, and I will admit I see appeal, and may even use a few of them myself, such as [name]Aubrey[/name]/[name]Avery[/name].
Some boys names are almost exclusively female like [name]Ashley[/name], and [name]Madison[/name].
I would never take an inherently girl name to name my son, nor would I do the same for my daughter with a boys name. I don’t understand it, and I find it silly and unnecessary, and problematic in the future.
Also, [name]Erin[/name] likely doesn’t sound odd because it’s a place name so there’s no distinctly female meaning, as well as it’s close in sound to [name]Aaron[/name] which is often and commonly used on boys.
The boy version of [name]Erin[/name] is [name]Aaron[/name], so it’s unisex, spelling depicts what gender it is usually, you sure he doesn’t spell his name [name]Aaron[/name]?
I would never give my girl a boy’s name and I would never give my boy a girls name. Giving a boy a feminine name sets him to be the one that gets picked on by the other boys for having a “sissy” name, while giving a girl a boy’s name sets her out be a tomboy.
As much as people say boys and girls are equal and try to deny gender. Gender exists because men and women have different brains and we were made to function differently. However, these people often give their girls male names, but don’t give their boys feminine ones, I always thought they were very hypocritical. Trying to make the girl more masculine rather than making the boy more feminine…
[name]Erin[/name] and [name]Aaron[/name] are two different names.
[name]Erin[/name] is the Irish and poetical name for [name]Ireland[/name], and [name]Aaron[/name] is a Hebrew name meaning exalted, high mountain, enlightened.
[name]Erin[/name] and [name]Aaron[/name] don’t have the same root as names, they just sound the same.
I would give a boy a name relevant to me that felt masculine to me - in my culture. I don’t really care if it “goes to the girls” though on the popular side, though. I’ve been told [name]Gabriel[/name], [name]Asher[/name], [name]Hanan[/name], etc. are “feminine sounding” but they don’t sound feminine to me and aren’t historically girls names, they’re Biblical, they were used for males, and one’s my granddad’s name.
But I wouldn’t name a boy a name I thought of as feminine - or a girl a name I thought of as masculine.
Only berries would know that, lol! We had [name]Erin[/name] and [name]Aaron[/name]'s in my class and grew up learning that [name]Aaron[/name] was for boys and [name]Erin[/name] was for girls, I don’t think their families really put much thought into origin… the kids probably didn’t care. But my mistake!
I would never give my daughter a boys name, or my boy a girls name. I also refuse to use unisex names. To put it midly it pisses me off when I hear people giving their daughters names like [name]Mason[/name], [name]James[/name], ect. I am pretty upset that [name]Avery[/name] is a girls name now. I think it is very HANDSOM.
To name a boy [name]Susan[/name], [name]Jane[/name], [name]Rachel[/name], [name]Hannah[/name], ect would be psychologically damaging. And to be honest I believe the same thing about parents who give thier daughters boy names. They are not doing thier daughters any favors, especially those who go to the extreme and try to blaze the path for a new cross over. I don’t believe in blurring the lines of gender in anyway. In fact it is something I am passionate about. Stripping away a persons gender is stripping away the building blocks of thier identity.
I could go on, but I won’t because this really isn’t the place for it. But there you go, there is my answer.
I know a male [name]Erin[/name]. I never though of it as a girl name and felt weird when I had a girl in my group a few years ago name [name]Erin[/name]. To me, the spelling felt streamlined and spunky, like him.
I list some boys I know with names that others might see as “girly”. These are friends kids, friends, things like that. I know people from a lot of different cultures, so I get a wide range of names.
[name]Rohan[/name] [name]Artemis[/name] – [name]Artemis[/name] is traditional feminine in Greek culture, but has been used on boys in the modern times
[name]Gale[/name] Hawke
[name]Winter[/name] [name]Gregory[/name]
[name]Jalon[/name] – said like [name]Jay[/name]-lon
[name]Zachary[/name] [name]Taylor[/name]
[name]Harper[/name] [name]Dmitri[/name]/[name]Whistler[/name] ?? – twins, I used to consider [name]Harper[/name] very girly
[name]Emilian[/name] – [name]Harper[/name] and Whistlers younger brother – pronounce em-ee-lee-an
Simionce – another of the same family – sim-ee-unce
[name]Kailyn[/name] [name]Jacob[/name]
[name]Noel[/name] pronounce no-el – I actually know several boys named [name]Noel[/name] pronounce No-el between young child and older than me
Azariel [name]Blake[/name] – pronounce Az-ah-reel
Hyperion [name]Isidore[/name] – [name]Isidore[/name] is actually a make name meaning “gift of [name]Isis[/name]” but sounds feminine
[name]Evander[/name] [name]Quinn[/name]
Izra – They’re indian I think
[name]Ashur[/name] [name]Quinn[/name]
Kohana [name]Alain[/name]
[name]Ninian[/name] [name]Clay[/name]
[name]Jarah[/name] [name]Koren[/name]
[name]Shiloh[/name] Larken
[name]Sage[/name]
It seems to be the thing where I’m living with people who aren’t “white” – Native American, Greek, and [name]Black[/name] are the majority of the people I know with those names up there.
Personally, I wouldn’t use a girly name on a boy (or a masculine name on a girl) unless it’s more like a unisex name and I don’t usually like those either. I work with a Riley Shane, Brooklyn Michael, and a mother named Tony, and none of those girls like the fact that they have boys names. I can’t imagine a boy named Sarah, Jane, etc would like it either. Unisex or slightly feminine, like the boys I know up there, are different (but I still don’t like them a lot).
We’re all dancing around the point. Masculinity is highly valued in society, for the most part, across cultures. [name]Hence[/name] it becomes acceptable to name girls [name]Evan[/name], [name]Emerson[/name], [name]Elliot[/name], [name]Harper[/name], [name]Avery[/name], [name]Sloane[/name], etc., but not acceptable to name boys [name]Eliza[/name], [name]Ellen[/name], [name]Gail[/name], (I know some will quibble here and add [name]Gale[/name], but again, not the point–no one is choosing [name]Gail[/name]), [name]Alison[/name], or [name]Ruth[/name], all of which, sound wise, could be used for boys.
Sound wise, [name]Ruth[/name] isn’t so far from [name]Seth[/name], but still, it isn’t heard. Soft masculine names such as [name]Philip[/name], [name]Noah[/name], [name]Ezra[/name] are just waiting to be gobbled up.
I wouldn’t give my son a name that was original for a girl but if you look at my favorite I want to use [name]Madison[/name], [name]Aubrey[/name], & [name]Sage[/name](which I don’t find feminine at all but others do).
That’s kind of odd, because men tend to prefer girls who are feminine and not masculine so I don’t think masculinity is highly valued by everyone. I think women tend to strive for masculinity because they want to be seen as equals to men and thus appear strong. In some cases, parents want a son and get a girl and try to compensate by giving her a boy/unisex name, like poor [name]Robin[/name] in [name]How[/name] I Met Your Mother. These cases sadden me because the poor girl has to fight all her life to be a girl.
I believe men have a tendency to prefer feminine girls. Men want to defiantly be more masculine than the girl they are dating, so I wonder how many guys would be willing to date a female [name]Elliot[/name] or [name]Emerson[/name]… especially it happened to be their name. [name]Just[/name] like [name]Taylor[/name] Swift and [name]Taylor[/name] Lautner… but that didn’t last…
It’s how our brains work. Men are supposed to be the protectors of women (just like the male lion defends his lionesses), if the woman is too strong, it makes them feel weak and they lose their purpose…
I would definitely give my son a unisex name (lol, my whole boys’ list is littered with them!), but a girls’ name? Probably not.
There is a fairly widespread trend back around the turn of the century, though, when the SSA list first came out. Off the top of my head, I know [name]Anna[/name], [name]Ivy[/name], [name]Katherine[/name] (and some of its other forms, like [name]Kate[/name] and [name]Katie[/name], I think?), [name]Pearl[/name], etc. were used by boys, and even ranked on the SSA list (as high up as about the 500th spot, I believe?). I find it funny that people consider [name]Anna[/name] 100% a girls’ name but they call [name]Elliot[/name] unisex, since their usage on opposite genders is pretty much the same.
Erin and Aaron are too separate names as far as I know and have nothing to do with each other, even if they were related I don’t know how it would make it unisex. Unisex names are ones like Marie or Dominique, it is indistinguishable between the sexes so two versions of a name that share a root word can’t be unisex, they’re simply different versions of the same name.
FWIW I have considered Whitney for a boy and don’t have a problem with Meredith, Ashley or Leslie. I also grew up with a guy named Rory so the name is all male to me.
I would not give a boy a girl’s name and I would not give a girl a boy’s name. To me the “unisex” name trend is just another way in which society is attempting to erase the concept of gender. Names are only a very small part of the problem and are more influential to building a young child’s identity than we might realize. I’m going to use the “unisex” name [name]Elliot[/name] as an example. When a little boy named [name]Elliot[/name] meets a little girl with his name, what does that say to him? That he has a “girl’s” name? That his name isn’t masculine enough? Perhaps the damage done is not so bad if Girl [name]Elliot[/name] is wearing camo cargo shorts, a Spiderman t-shirt, and playing in the mud like Boy [name]Elliot[/name]. That says to Boy [name]Elliot[/name] that wearing camo, liking Spiderman, and playing in the mud is what Elliots do. But what if Girl [name]Elliot[/name] is in a pretty pink dress and carrying a doll, and Boy [name]Elliot[/name] now thinks he’s supposed to wear and do the same as Girl [name]Elliot[/name]? Or maybe he’s just wondering why this icky girly girl with cooties has his boy name. In the second scenario, regardless, Boy [name]Elliot[/name] becomes confused, and if he were to do the same as Girly Girl [name]Elliot[/name], he would be shunned by his peers. Boys are criticized and rejected for being like girls, yet girls are praised and accepted for being like boys. [name]How[/name] confusing that must be for the men these boys will become, to live in a world where women are no longer their complement, but their competition. Men and women are, always have been, and always will be different. Why should we not respect this when it comes to naming our children?
Thank you augusta_lee for finding a much less obcenity of laden way of saying what I was thinking.
For the record, I have a traditionally male name (although it’s so seldom used that few people would recognize it as such.) My husband has what I consider a true unisex name, although one seen more often on girls. His masculinity is not threatened by occassionally sharing a name with a girl, and I do not consider myself unduly scarred by the fact that I was occassionally mistaken for a boy growing up. So lets get real people. If you don’t like boys names on girls, don’t use them. But seriously, as far as the world’s problems go, a girl named James or a boy named Sue are not high on the list of things leading to the break down of society.
To answer the initial question, it depends. I probably wouldn’t give a boy a commonly used female name, or a girl a name that’s very common on boys, but then again I tend to avoid really common names altogether. On the other hand, I wouldn’t let the fact that a name is used by the opposite sex stop me from using it. This applies mostly to nature names, word names, and I think surnames as well. But in addition, lets say for instance a name I like for a boy is used by girls in a different culture - I’d definitely still consider it.
Note to self: stop looking at any of these threads, as they raise my blood pressure.
So what will poor [name]Elliot[/name] do when he meets gay [name]Elliot[/name], or wheelchair-bound [name]Elliot[/name], or much-better-at-football-than-he-is-[name]Elliot[/name]? He’s gonna have to deal with the fact there are other people with his name. Why is so much more confronting to him that a girl has his name?
I don’t even like unisex names very much but these silly “always been, always will be different” arguments are ridiculous.
Society isn’t erasing the concept of gender. Society is full of merchandising the role of pink vs. blue and telling little children that what they can do or play with is based on their gender.
so I don’t think masculinity is highly valued by everyone. I think women tend to strive for masculinity because they want to be seen as equals to men and thus appear strong. In some cases, parents want a son and get a girl and try to compensate by giving her a boy/unisex name, like poor [name]Robin[/name] in [name]How[/name] I Met Your Mother. These cases sadden me because the poor girl has to fight all her life to be a girl.
