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Original poster

Your name must make your gender clear

57 replies

AmandaPayne · 01/02/2013 14:49

I was interested in this news story from Iceland. Authorities decided that a girl had been given a 'male' named and denied her official use of it for her entire childhood.

It got me thinking. For all our increasing obsession in the UK with pink bumbos, blue nursing covers, do you think we are becoming more comfortable with unisex names? And is it a good thing for feminism that you can't always judge someone's gender from their name?

OP posts:
CailinDana · 01/02/2013 15:47

I have a unisex name, albeit one that is spelled differently for each gender. It's never caused me any problems except that people always spell it the male way.

What's interesting is that unisex names that are popular for females tend to stop being male names over time as though by being associated with female contaminates it as a male name. For example, where once Hilary and Evelyn were unisex names, the tendency for them to be used more for girls means it's really really rare to hear them being used for boys any more. Yet when there are two distinct versions of a name for each gender - eg Michelle and Michael, they tend to both survive. My name is one of the few unisex ones where there seems to be more men with it than women.

What's the justification for needing to know a person's gender from their name?

Jux · 01/02/2013 15:38

Hilary
Valery
Vivienne/Vivian

Those are unisex names which surprised me when I first came across them. Old as the hills, very traditional.

We have a long history of names being used in whatever way takes our fancy, it seems. I even know a girl called Pullan ..... poor thing was horribly ribbed about her name all her childhood, but it's a family name and had been used for generation after generation.

5madthings · 01/02/2013 15:22

To me its a ..

5madthings · 01/02/2013 15:21

Not in RL but on atv program yes, american family. Have also seen a girl called Elliott.

My ds3 is Dylan so to merits a boys name but I woukdnt find it odd as a girls name.

Writehand · 01/02/2013 15:18

During the previous debate about transgender people, I linked to a transwoman whose DD isl called Dylan. I've never come across Dylan as a girl's name but when I checked on the Mumsnet Baby name finder it came up as unisex. Has anyone come across a girl called Dylan?

Original poster
AmandaPayne · 01/02/2013 15:04

No, true. But we do have a lot of the 'surname as first name' unisex names. Bailey and the like.

OP posts:
ouryve · 01/02/2013 14:51

We have some very old names in the English language which at least sound unisex, even if the spelling is different. I'm not sure that there's that many that are popular at the moment, though.