Why do people think it's OK-even desirable- to give girl's boys names, but not the other way round?

[BertrandRussell]

When a boy's name becomes associated with girls, it loses favour for boys- as if the association devalues it.

Shit-massive apostrophe fail in the title!

Welcome to the patriarchy!

Patriarchy

Same way dinosaurs are cool for girls but unicorns would be weird for boys.

It stinks

I swore I wouldn't use the P word.....

See a well know vlogger resently tweeted that "names have no gender" and i prehaps in some ways agree with him. I was trying to explain to two people that most names are dervitives of male names. Names that are now seen as female were orginally male names shirley, hilary, kimberly etc. Added in to the situation that the name in question is male in the country of orgin but female else were in the world the amount of commebts like he'll get bullied etc

These two people by the way were femake and could not accept that ollie and ali, were derviatives of male names. I said your names ollie odd name for a girl give its a boys name and thsy tried to correct me and go i think you mean its a odd nane for a boy. No no i don't mean that.

But ive noticed it not just with names, if a little girl dresses in blue, likes sports, plays with cars her parents are such wonderful parents, so enlightened, well done on letting her be herself, if a boy likes princesses, wanders around with a barbie doll - he will be bullied his parents are awlful...he'll be gay.

Its a thing that girls can have masciline names and be more mascline but boys cant be in any way feminine

I don't know, dc2 has a boys name but it is slowly becoming unisex and probably will end up as a girls name in a decade or so.

I wouldn't give a girl a boy's name or a boy a girl's name, and I'm one of those parents who give their little boys dolls and tea party sets along with their cars.

It's not fair, there's so little choice for boy names as it is without the current ones being appropriated. Maybe I'm unreasonable, I think unique spellings are ridiculous as well, particularly as my own normal name has a stupidly unique spelling.

“It's not fair, there's so little choice for boy names as it is without the current ones being appropriated“

Two things puzzle me here- surely there are as many boys names as there are girls? And when you say “appropriation” do you mean you’re agreeing that a name becomes unsuitable for boys once girls start being called it?

I came on to say patriarchy, too

It seems to be naming a boy Marjorie would be setting him up for a weak life with a non-masculine job: the old 'high court judge/prime minister' type test. Whereas Madison or Bailey for a girl could appear to give her a leg up in the world.

This shit stinks.

Our 7yo makes tanks out of cardboard boxes, plays with my original My Little Pony, says 'awww how cute!' when he sees a puppy/kitten/baby anything, loves babies and toddlers, loves running through the woods with stick-guns shooting the dog and squirrels, and wants to be a policeman when he grows up. He has a masculine name cos I loved one of Walter Matthau's characters in a Neil Simon film. Plus it's international and we live abroad - it could have been Marjory, he would not have got any stick here in Spain...

Bear in mind, too, that there are a lot of dumb people around. I don't bat an eye at names - Blue Bear, Tiger-Lily etc, meh call your child what you want. But for the narrow-minded among us who think 'weak/string/chav*/posh' etc these names will pigeonhole the child/adult mostly unfairly.

We have all been socialised to thignk man: good, woman: a bit feeble.

• not my word and i hate using it, but you get what i mean.

Because anything associated with women is "lesser". See under "Patriarchy" and "utterly sexist shite"

There aren't as many boy names as girls, I can't remember the figures (and I can't open the ons spreadsheets now) but there seems to be a higher number of individual girl names each year than boy names.

And when I say appropriated, yes I mean it becomes unsuitable for a boy no matter how much I wish it didn't. I'm not using my sons to make a statement by calling them Chloë and Jemima because that is likely to make their lives difficult in the future. I can't change Society's reaction to the names, I don't want my children to deal with the reaction.

I’ve got a fairly big gap between my oldest and youngest dc and a lot of ‘boy’ names in the oldests cohort are ‘girl’ names in the youngests. These are names like Taylor, Riley, Bailey.

I understand about Chloe. But that's never been a boy's name, surely?

I really really dislike this trend. A friend of mine called her ds Rowan and was scoffed at by her dsis for giving him a girl's name. James is imo awful for a girl as are the surname type names. Actually, I don't like those for either sex. Maybe I'm an old got in a late twenties body!

It's obvious, isn't it? Girls can rock a traditionally male name because it just imbues them with the (supposedly masculine) positive qualities of strength and independence. Whereas a boy called Carol, or Hilary, or Shirley would be seen as weak, prissy and (God forbid) effeminate.

Society prizes men over women.

I of course agree re: patriarchy.

But what do you mean by ‘boys’ names’? I don’t see many little girls getting called Robert and John. It tends to be modern coinages (like Bailey, mentioned above) and they’re new enough not to have the same associations so people are less likely to be bothered by them.

I actually like a lot of the modern coinages on boys and girls. DS’s name often gets mistaken for a girls’ name, which is fine - it’s a beautiful name And it actually is a girls’ name in some countries.

I think this probably varies by local area too - some places are more conservative.

Chloë and Jemima were never boys names, just like all the girls who are now being given boy names. It's the same thing in reverse, giving a boy a traditionally girl name.