To say that 'Beau' is not a girls' name?

[mrsb26]

Over the past few months, I've come across an increasing number of baby girls named 'Beau.'

Am I wrong on assuming that this is French in origin, meaning 'handsome?' (or the masculine form of beautiful). Surely Belle is then the feminine form?

One was even spelt Beaux. This is the plural, right? The X doesn't make it feminine?!

Idk, maybe people don't really focus on definitions of names. Just found it a bit odd that it's becoming a bit of a trend.

Just because something is a word with a particular meaning in one language doesn't mean it can't be a word with a completely different meaning in another or a completely unrelated name with no particular meaning.

A 'real' name? If it's used as a name it's a name. Just because I wouldn't call my daughter Vaseline doesn't mean that it's not perfectly serviceable as a name.

I knew a Bow when I was younger, pronounced like Bo/Beau. She had a sibling with a colour name and another who was called Cruise (a boy), presumably after Tom Cruise

But MN gets it knickers in a twist about 'gendered' toys yet a girl can't have a 'boys' name! The irony 😂😂

The subconscious misogyny of unisex baby name trends shows a girl can be given a boy's name, but not vice versa. Once a name goes from boy to unisex, it has a limited life expectancy before unisex flips to "too many girls" and boys don't use it (as discussed upthread).

It's technically incorrect, but if you can be called be female and called Bo Derek, then you can be called Beau too i guess.

It's ignorant. It's laughable for a female. How awful to be saddled with a blaring mistake as a name.

inlaw I think the point is that girls are often given boys names because they are, subconsciously, considered to be better.

Calling your daughter Dylan/James/Beau/Luca, any traditionally male name, because you want her to have a "strong" name, highlights how deeply ingrained it is in people's psyche's that male = better.

The priblem is not that it's a boy's name. That is not the problem.

The problem is that it is a grammatical impossibility. So it is simply an incontravertible mistake. One can name a baby girl Beau, but it will always recignised as being horrendously wrong by anyone who has ever learnt the adjective beau/belle in French. A girl cannot be described as beau. It's an impossibility.

It really hurt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beau_Garrett
Didn't it...

If only she had a proper feminine name, she might've made something of herself.

It's a name, it's a nice name, it's not ignorant, it's not laughable, it's a name. If the kid doesn't like it, they can change it.

What about other 'boys' names for girls?
So a girl can (and should in my opinion) be able to do what she wants in regards to playing as a child and work options as an adult but people will go into a frenzy screaming but it means masculine in French 😐

Her name I should have added

I think I had always assumed Bo was short for Boadicea.

Beau on the other hand reminds me of Eternal Beau that ghastly twee table ware collection from the 1980's

I don't believe that the majority of people who use Beau for a girl realise it's the masculine form of Belle, that's the point. I'd doubt they even realise it's French.

Just like people don't realise Mondeo isn't a word.

302 boys vs 277 girls called Beau registered in 2014
318 boys vs 295 girls in 2013
131 boys vs 78 girls in 2005
20 boys vs 4 girls in 2000

So since becoming an actually remotely common name, it's pretty much unisex, slight favour to male - but then there's also other forms of Beau with different spelling or combinations (Beaux Lily-Beau etc.) which actually make it more common for girls in 2014 and 2013, that very variation of names being much more common for girls is another aspect of the "male" "female" names that this thread shows up with horrible sexism in naming.

When I hear the name "Beau" I always think of a dead old film called Beau Geste. I think it was based on a novel. Anyway he was a man and he joined the French Foreign Legion and some stuff happened that I can't remember- but he was definitely a man. So yes I have never been in any doubt it is a male name. And of course Beau Brummel.

Bo, on the other hand, like SirRodneyEffing, I assumed was short for Boadicea (or should that be Boudicca) and as such is very acceptable.

Ah sitting on hands for fear of outing but I know a Beaux, it's actually double barrelled with an equally strange name. So as not to totally out me in any search engines I shall add only that her sibling is named after a perfume.

DD is a Belle, not the name on her birth certificate but kind of an evolution nickname of her name that stuck. She likes it actually and most of her friends use it.
Had many comments when she was younger that we'd named her after the Disney Princess though.

I teach MFL and mention beau (= handsome man) and belle (= beautiful girl) - cf the character in Beauty and the beast - when we are learning about adjective agreements.

A kid the other day said oh, she knew a girl called Beau. I was a bit as to what to say to that. Only ever heard it as a boy's name (Beau Nash, Beau Brummell Beau Bridges). Luckily the child doesn't go to our school. Let's hope she learns German or Spanish not French!

DS2 told us tonight there was a boy at his school called Drone. I am sure he must have misunderstood but he said he asked twice.

Probably identifying but DD1 is Bo, short for Bojana.

Hate to rain on the parade, but "beau" is also a noun in French - meaning beauty in an abstract philosophical sense (as opposed to "beaute" (with e acute) which means beauty in the physical sense). It's perfectly appropriate as a name for either gender.

I speak a couple modern foreign languages proficiently and if there's one thing I've learned is that even when you get quite good as a second language speaker it's unwise to start diagnosing language mistakes without checking that you haven't made a mistake - all languages have so many exceptions and secondary/tertiary uses of words.

The usual noun for (many forms of) beauty in France is beauté.

Going in to rarer vocabulary isn't necessarily going to help. Beau can also mean enough/plenty (far more common than the philosophical term) so should one make the case that it's unisex for the last child of a numerous family?

Or just realise that there is an obvious, first meaning? And that AFAIK it's not a girls name in France.

YANBU, I can only see it as a man's name.

It reminds me of Nikita - I've heard of a few little girls called Nikita, when in its country of origin, it conjures up a big old middle-aged bloke.

An American ex colleague of mine recently called her baby girl Bryce. I think these things are just becoming more fluid these days.

angua - But it's not a boy's name in France either (or maybe it is now, but only as an American import). It's also pretty common for high-flown abstract nouns to be given as names in English (Hope, Grace, Prudence etc) - certainly far more common than giving adjectives as names (or adverbs!). So where a French word is appropriated by English speakers it seems to me more likely that it would adopt this convention - seems more likely that people are going to want to call their DDs "Beauty" than "Handsome" so rather strange to prove that the latter is intended (especially as it's open to people to call their DDs Belle/Bella). I don't think it makes a difference that "beauty" isn't the most common usage of the word - that's not because people don't know what it means, it's because people don't spend their days talking about the idea of beauty! And as you point out, beau is a massively overused French words - so the most common meaning in practice is probably nice/fine or something - but that doesn't mean we assume that parents are meaning to call their kids "Nice" does it?

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