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Where a name sits

Gender and names in : From two columns to more fields

Gender and names shows why a name survives in under “From two columns to more fields.” The figure beside that is 1. Do not write a baby-name score as if it were a statute. Separate the name you register from the name you call. A name and a role taken on — folklore of gendered files.

How names do gender — unisex drifts, legal sex-marking and the difference between a file category and a person. Most official baby-name files still publish separate lists by recorded sex. That is a statistical convenience and a social story: it treats gender as a binary column beside a string.

A unisex name is a string that appears in more than one of those columns, or that moves from one to the other over decades (Leslie, Ashley, and others in English-language history). This page is about how names mark, leak and refuse gender. It is not about predicting personality from a gendered etymology.

A given name used for more than one gender in a community or file. Wikipedia’s “Unisex name” is the hero article for this topic. Some English names have drifted in SSA history (e.g. Ashley toward girls in late-20th-century U.S. files). That is a dated pattern, not a law. Because registration forms did. The split makes unisex research extra work and makes non-binary people statistically awkward.

Say Gender and names with , “From two columns to more fields,” and 1. Luck-stars are not those three.1

Figures to keep

Year of the rule
1
Figure on the name
1
Topic
Gender and names
Line in the record
From two columns to more fields

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