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Where a name sits

Gender and names in : From grammar to rights

Gender and names shows why a name survives in under “From grammar to rights.” 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. Correction of “sir/ma’am” on the phone

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 grammar to rights,” 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 grammar to rights

Given names in 2000: Endings, imitation and avoidance of last year’s peak explain much movement in giNext essayAll 1100 essays1100