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Feminism: Sex & gender discussions

Any examples of a feminine name becoming a male name?

46 replies

redrubyshoes · 09/06/2012 22:03

I can think of hundreds of names that are feminised from the masculine but I am stumped to think of a single name that is the opposite

Roberta
Louisa
Frederica
Josephine
Alexandra

etc etc

I mean bloody hundreds.

Any example of a female name becoming masculine? I mean a common everyday name.

Maybe Lindsay which was a male name in Scotland but is now considered female....................

My name is feminised by adding an 'a' at the end.

OP posts:
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TeiTetua · 09/06/2012 22:22

Mario?

I was in school with a boy named Lindsay.

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Margerykemp · 09/06/2012 23:19

Oscar used to be a girls name.

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lilbreeze · 09/06/2012 23:23

Marie? As in Jean-marie. In France not here though obviously. Think they use Maria in the same way in Spain too.

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tribpot · 09/06/2012 23:24

The obvious likely examples from history would come from powerful women who petitioners wanted to suck up to by naming a child after them. So you'd expect to see some male form of Elizabeth having come into being after Elizabeth I (and Bess of Hardwick) but I think the suckers-up would more usually have gone for Henry after H VIII.

Not quite the same but Maria is a relatively common boys' middle name in Spain, but Mario alas would seem to come from Mars (I thought he came from the Super Mario Galaxy - boom boom).

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5Fingered · 09/06/2012 23:35

Morgan?

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nymets · 09/06/2012 23:37

tracey?

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redrubyshoes · 09/06/2012 23:37

I always get a little Confused when a girl is named something like Madison or Mackenzie which means 'son of'.

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SweetTheSting · 09/06/2012 23:38

Lesley/Leslie? Which way round was that?

I see your point OP!

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FairPhyllis · 09/06/2012 23:40

In some parts of the German speaking world Maria can be a man's name: e.g. Erich Maria Remarque, who wrote All Quiet On the Western Front.

French men sometimes have a female name hyphenated with a masculine one (but the masculine one has to be first), e.g. Jean-Marie.

European names tend to be derived male>female because in most European languages the male form is taken to be the basic one and you get derivational suffixes added for the feminine. This is often the case for adjectives in languages with case, for example. I can think of plenty of endings for the feminine in English: -ette, -ina, -a, -ine, but not of any for the masculine.

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FairPhyllis · 09/06/2012 23:40

Cross posted with lilbreeze.

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GwenGotLost · 09/06/2012 23:56

I have a male friend called Kerston...

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TeiTetua · 10/06/2012 05:28

The name was apparently a one-off job, but there was a male aristocrat and military leader in 16th century France named Anne de Montmorency.

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Daneel · 10/06/2012 06:31

I read somewhere that Douglas was originally a girls' name.

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Wilding · 10/06/2012 07:04

Sidney used to be quite a popular girl's name

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grimbletart · 10/06/2012 12:48

My middle name is Evelyn. So few boys are named Evelyn that I suspect that it was originally a girl's name that was later a boys name. But I don't know.

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Cloudbase · 10/06/2012 13:46

Ciara? Thinking of Ciaran, but no idea which came first Blush

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LynetteScavo · 10/06/2012 13:50

A boy named Sue, as in the song....?

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maybenow · 10/06/2012 13:52

lindsay, leslie, hillary, evelyn, rowan,

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maybenow · 10/06/2012 13:53

nicola?
michelle? / michele.. not sure whether the male or female of these came first...

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rosy71 · 10/06/2012 19:44

Robyn/Robin? Which came first?

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chelspa · 10/06/2012 21:13

I have read that Douglas used to be a girl's name too.

I am a guy named Chelsea, but even that used to be used for boys than girls once too.

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EdithWeston · 10/06/2012 21:16

Cruz.

In US, Aubrey and even Maxwell

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misslinnet · 10/06/2012 23:09

Pretty sure that there was a man called Oscar in Irish mythology.

As I recall, names like Tracey, Sidney, Lindsay, Shirley, Beverley started out as surnames, then started to be used as given names for boys, and then, maybe because the 'y' ending sounds a bit feminine, started to become popularised as girls names. Douglas also started out as a Scottish surname.

Robin was originally a nickname for Robert, so male first.

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ohdobuckup · 10/06/2012 23:09

Lesley/Leslie...' 'I's for ''im'', 'E's for 'Er..''

Ashley..Ashleigh..Ashlee started as boy name I think, now mixed

a bit off topic, but where does a name like 'Jayden' come from..? Who was the first one, and why?

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CuttedUpPear · 10/06/2012 23:20

Tracey used to be a boy's name.

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