Icelandic patronymics, Slavic endings, and Japanese/Korean fashion each sex a name differently.
Do not export the Ashley story as a theory of the world.
Regions
- English-speaking files — Unisex drift stories
Ashley/Leslie-type histories in SSA — dated, sourced.
- Iceland — Patronymic gender
-son / -dóttir marks the parent-link by the child’s sex in the traditional pattern (modern variants exist — check current law).
- Russia & neighbours — Surname endings
Morphology sexes the family name.
- Germany — Namensrecht
A history of expecting sex-marked given names, now in flux.
- Korea / Japan — Fashion-gendered characters and endings
Social gender without the same unisex Wikipedia frame.
- Spain — Two surnames + gendered given names
Structure on the family side, fashion on the given side.
Laws
- Namensrecht sex-marking Germany (evolving) — Legal friction on “wrong-sex” given names has been a real issue.
- Icelandic grammar + list Iceland — Gendered inflection can be part of approval.
- Gender-recognition acts UK and others — May include a new given name as part of legal gender update.
- Statistical sex categories SSA/ONS/KOSTAT — Publishing rules that shape what “unisex” can mean in data.
Ask which part of the name is doing the gender work — given name, ending, honorific, or form column.