Is Ezra is a girl or a boy

[Kieran152010]

Ezra is a girl’s name! just y’know who she is a girls name

I've never met anyone called Ezra but I know that it's a Biblical male name and the only characters in literature that I have come across called Ezra have been male.

The only famous Ezra that I have heard of is Ezra Pound - male American poet.

It could become unisex if enough girls are called Ezra or even evolve into a girls' name if many girls are called Ezra and very, very few boys are called Ezra. That's what happened to the name Shirley.

It's a male name from the Old Testament.

What I mean is that I know, for example, than in Russia shortened forms of male names often end with an A (Sasha, Misha etc).

Thinking about it, most male biblical names used here for years were New Testament names, and I guess they’ve been anglicised over the centuries.

I know a Turkish female Esra
I know a British male Ezra

A lot of Hebrew given names are unisex, and there's no linguistic reason that Ezra can't be (as someone said above, it means "help" or "helper" - which in many cultural contexts would be MORE likely to apply to a woman than to a man). Ezra (or Ezer, the old Hebrew form) has no trad female form, so if you want the Ezra meaning or wanted to honour some called Ezra you might be tempted to use the name as is for a girl. I'm guessing that it's mainly the very strong association of the name with the Old Testament character Ezra the Scribe (who led Jewish exiles back to Jerusalem from Babylon and helped reestablish the Torah as law) that has kept and still keeps it mainly male.

I've met quite a few boys called Ezra in my years as a primary teacher but I've yet to meet a girl with that name. I have met some girls called Izra/Isra, and they've all been from Indian or Pakistani Muslim backgrounds