> Of the 42 names that moved toward girls, 34 were driven mainly by an increase among girls, rather than a decline among boys.

> Surprisingly, the same pattern held in the opposite direction. Of the 12 names that moved toward boys, 9 shifted mainly because fewer girls were receiving them, rather than because more boys were. In other words, whichever way a name moved, the biggest change usually came from girls.

This is consistent with the observation that girl's names are more dynamic.

There are a few names I think are being confused. Jan, short for Janice is a female name, but Jan in Central / Eastern Europe as a form of John is masculine. Jean the female name and Jean the french male name are different.

My biggest WTF on this (as a foreigner) was the late Lindsey Graham. I always knew Lindsey/Lindsay as a female name.

Either way, peeking through the list, seems to me names which end with a vowel are usually feminine. However, there's a caveat: names end up shortened, and over time even those get shortened.

'Brit', 'Britney' for 'Brittany'.

'Gerry' or 'Geri' or 'Ger' for 'Gareth' (Dutch variant: 'Gerrit'),

'Pat', 'Patty' for 'Patrick', 'Patricia'.

'Pen', 'Penny' for 'Penelope'

'Ash' for 'Ashley'.

'Tash' or 'Tasha' for 'Natasha', 'Nata(s)cha' (a variant of Nathan/Nathaniel?)

'Toni', 'Tony', or 'Ton' for 'Antonia', 'Anton', or 'Antonius'.

Skimming through the quick examples I came up with, one thing stands out: if it ends with an 'a', feminine. I believe this stems from Latin? It also appears Brittany is a very British example, whereas say 'Tony' stems from a Catholic background. People with that background get very traditional names, but they're always practically shortened. Annoyingly, you'd have to mention your complete name on say a form, but otherwise you get a wider choice since you have like three names, and they're relatively long so more variety to pick from.

There was a guy at my school named Hilary who got awful abuse for it. Always wondered why parents would do such a thing to a child.

Just a data point from the SFBA ...

There are a lot of Ronins. Lots.

Sometime 8-12 years ago, dads in Marin got a glint in their eye:

"My son ... the wayward samurai ..."

I'm surprised Ryan wasn't on the list. Traditionally a boys name, but I know at least 3 women named Ryan. Maybe it hasn't reached a tipping point yet.

But Jean (English name, like Jeannie) and Jean (French form of John) are entirely different names, with different pronunciations, that happen to share the same spelling.

I feel like a lot of these can be tied to one famous person with the name causing the gender to flip.

Most interesting thing that stands out to me is the number of names that appear to be what I would consider an abbreviation of a more traditional name.

e.g. “Pat” is cited, but doesn’t specify whether that refers to Patricia or Patrick.

I've noticed more girls are being named Parker these days. My 1yo son is named Parker. He's holding the line.

A name I was surprised by was someone I know naming their daughter Miles/Myles, which is such a male name in my mind. It might even be based on the Latin word for soldier. It's not one I've seen used for a girl anywhere else, yet.

A wonderful example of how gender is a social construct.

I was very much shocked to see a feminine version of my name used IIRC on Dead Or Alive 4 (DOA4), not knowing the backstory: I think it was a character called Leon was promising to avenge his dead girlfriend, Rolande.

I've wondered if the women that have carried the name have liked it? In my mind, it's always sounded very blunt so as to be feminine, but I recognize I'm heavily biased when it comes to my own name.

Interesting data. Nightmare color scale for the colorblind.

Most of the names that flip over seem to be names associated with the gentry class, many of the names seem to be neutral, soft very inoffensive names.

Most surprising was "Mario" becoming shared. "Maria/Mario" seemed inherently gendered, based on the last letter.

I’d be curious if men with female names get rejected out of a lot of job interviews since the employer may have thought they chose a female for DEI and then a man shows up?

Or maybe it’s a good way to get your foot in the door in todays job market.

I'm just really surprised that 21% of Lynn's are boys.

It's super hard to keep track of, I have an app that's designed to help couples name their baby, and I always wanted to stay away from hard-defined gender stuff, but people still want boy/girl categories. So many are both, but to varying degrees. I ended up using a boy/girl/unisex selector, and had Jev tag all the names. It's especially when dealing with other countries, languages, and customs. At the end of the day, it's mostly easier for the user to just swipe left on a name rather than try to pre-eliminate it from their pool.

Surprised Sue wasn't mentioned. I had heard that boys had started being called Sue (sample size of 1, but very prominent).

Stevie is a girl's name now?

I'm gonna credit George RR Martin with flipping Arya in the mid '90s

Good luck to the Perl function Text::GenderFromName()

Maybe it needs the birthday

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Super informative article.

What about Aaron -> Erin ?

Sort of reminds me of the color swap of Pink and Blue for Men and Women.

Surprised to not see "Jordan" in there, it's the first one that came to my mind.

Green to orange? Why not blue to pink? I know it is stereotypical, but it is the natural colouring.