to use James on a girl?

[AyGirl]

Am overdue. Baby has not arrived. Do not know gender. Have finally after much indecision, decided a girl will be Iris James. Mentioned to DB who got very upset and kept on saying it's not a girls name. Mother has rang me this morning and said he was so upset because he wants to name a son of his James. Keep in mind he is not married or having a child. I do think they are TTC. But I want to use Iris James!!!!! She said that I shouldn't and should save it for him because it will be his first child and a son. So what, the two beautiful little girls I've delivered into our family are nothing. A boy will probably be Gage Theodore.

My older DDs are Hattie Juniper and Cleo Annika so we use quite different names.

Your family is being totally fucking unreasonable. You call your ACTUAL daughter whatever you like. Your brother willl just have to find another name for his imaginary baby! FFS.

I've always thought Elliot is more female than male - like a cross between Ellie and Charlotte.

My middle name is a boys name (my dads) and my first name is a cousins middle name (but I didn't know till I was older as no one used middle names when I was growing up). So what - together they're my name, I like it and that's that.
Call your DC what you want to, unless it's offensive or just too bizarre it's up to you and no one else.

"Today 07:52 Craigie

Your family is being totally fucking unreasonable. You call your ACTUAL daughter whatever you like. Your brother willl just have to find another name for his imaginary baby! FFS."

YES! This!

Is there a reason for the nameJames? angel sibling or memorial reason( a family name that might disappear f it isnt used as a middle name? My children both have unusual and not gender specific middle names. They know the reasons and are proud of their special names...so any playground teasing/bullying is not an issue. Is it because perhaps you are in a LBTQ relationship and you want your childs identifying gender to be fluid until they decide for themselves what name to choose? FWIW If you have a specific family reason..do it. Otherwise dont saddle your child with a name or initials that invite future peer bullying .

Congratulations on your imminent arrival, hope you don't have to wait too long I Personally love the name Iris James and agree your DB is BU. He can still use it. Hope you can update us on the new arrival??!

Well certainly a reaction. If you do decide to go with the name you will forever have the rather lovely responses some have posted haunting you. Think I have to agree with some that maybe keeping it quiet until baby arrives then deal with the fact that everyone has an opinion! Didn't we all grow up wishing we were called something else. I was one of 4 or 5 girls with the same name albeit various spellings of the same name ... Boring! I ended up with the nickname Jeff - I am obviously female but had a "boyish" hair cut at one point - I embraced Jeff as hated my "common" name! It's a middle name FFS! I think everyone has been a bit judgy ... 😳

As part of my job I check our customers fully names - it is extremely common for people to have multiple surnames names as middle names. I must speak to 70 people per day and 50% of them have surnames incorporated into their middle names.

Iris James sounds lovely and very sweet. Use it and tell your brother to get over it!

(Haven't rtft sorry, trying to sort the dcs out! And failing! )

You might check first if the registrar will object - unlikely, but awkward if s/he refuses to register 'James'.

A name like Vivian isn't so much a unisex name as a name with masculine and feminine forms. It was used spelled Vivien in a Tennyson poem to describe a female.

There's a difference between those names and ones that start as one as pass over to another.

I haven't read the whole thread, so someone may have already mentioned this, but it's interesting to note that names like Stacy, Madison, Lynn, Lauren, Kendall etc all started out as "boys" names.

You might check first if the registrar will object - unlikely, but awkward if s/he refuses to register 'James'.

Seriously??? With some of the ridiculous names and spellings these days you really think the registar will object?

I'm 36 and have a "boys" name.... If it was fine in 1980, I'm pretty sure it'll be ok now.

Sorry I haven't rtft but did anyone else think Irish James?
unhelpful

James is most definitely, 100% a boys name

It's not even one of those ambiguous could be either gender names e.g. like lesley/leslie

It's up to you, your baby and all that

If you do have a boy, you could call him james then?

I think james is actually a beautiful name.
I have this ok yes not technichally a girls.but really? how said?where?what decides apart from us some long time ago in history what was girls and boys. now I no I no I'm also part of the lets keep things 'right' 'proper' how they always have been. but somehow james is tipping it for me. it fits somehow. now William that would be pushing me lol

My DH always had 2 boys names he loved, one being is own middle name. His brother then had a boy and named him using both those 2 names. DH wasn't delighted but would never of caused a fuss because they were having a boy right then, we were a while away from having any children and even then there is no guarantee we would have boys.
Now expecting our 1st child and if it is a boy we still plan on using the same middle name as his brother.
Your brother is being unreasonable/ridiculous.

Also - James is a unisex name and I think it goes lovely with Iris.

You might check first if the registrar will object - unlikely, but awkward if s/he refuses to register 'James'.

LOL, registrars are more concerned with baby Satans, Adolfs and Tallulah-does-the-hula-in-Hawaii to be concerned with a girl being given the middle names 'James'.

What if the baby is actually a boy and the predicted sex is wrong?? 😳

If the baby is a boy maybe give him a girl's middle name, like Mabel?

But that won't happen! The value of a male name conferred onto a girl is something totally different to the idea of a boy with a girl's name. Which is why using boys names for girls to me seems somewhat to the detriment of girls.

Italiangreyhound. Interesting point. A bit like which ever magazine made Bono woman of the year.....yes it's thought-provoking but does it devalue those women who were nominated?

Also, Maria is a very common boys middle name in catholic countries.

Food for thought.

My names are the product of parents who I'm guessing desperately wanted to be hip and/or unique and one of my middle names is a boys name. Please consider how your child might feel if you give it a name that will deliberately stand out for the rest of its life. Nasty fellow students, / snide comments from future coworkers etc. To this day I still really wish my parents had thought a bit better about it.

Iris is beautiful though x

So glad my Daughter goes to a school where there are no 2 of the same name in her class. Very few in the top 10, in fact. Individuality is embraced and I have never, in all her 5 years there, heard of anyone being bullied about their name! Never heard of anyone being bullied, come to think of it. There's also no playground politics...perhaps children learn from their parents?

Love the name James for a girl and your brother is no where near having a child of either sex so use it. Your brother sounds a bit of a brat tbh sorry!

You can't get away from this: every time she has to give her full name she will be laughed at or misunderstood - and children can be cruel. If you want to make a statement about it being wrong to reserve names according to gender - either use Alex or Evelyn which are genuinely unisex or change you own name to Edward or Alfred or something traditionally male - and you take the mockery and the mis-spellings.