All of these names could be male OR female. But what do you consider them, in your mind – like what assumption would you make if you saw the name on someone’s job application or on a class attendance list, if you did not know the gender of the person?
Morgan
Taylor
Ashley
Dana
Stacy
Kelly
Logan
Dakota
Jordan
Jamie
Hayden
Madison
Reese
Riley
Tate
Tracy
Whitney
Seriously…why would people name their boys Kelly, Ashley, Madison, Whitney? I can’t imagine them having ANY sort of male qualities to the name.
Ashley is originally a guy’s name. I know a guy named Stacy. Madison also was originally male.
Whitney, I have heard can be either but I have not known any men with it… I assume it was originally male.
That’s my take on it. Jamie is tricky, for an adult to call themselves that I’d assume female. Kid, more difficult.
The interesting thing is, with the possible exception of Tracy, all of these started out as male names.
The one I never considered female is Morgan. If someone mentioned a friend with that name I’d assume a guy.
Ashley, Dana, Stacy, Tracy, and Whitney all seem to me to be female names nowadays. The rest could go either way, except for Tate and Logan, which seem male.
For the names I have a strong feeling about, it’s because I know someone with that name. For others, I’ve known more people of one sex than the other who have the name.
For Kelly - well, I married one, so I’m bound by loyalty to consider the name male, regardless of how it’s gone since 1960 or so.
Many of these I associate with entertainers of some sort, so that influences my “default”: Taylor (Swift), Dakota (Fanning), Hayden (Paniterr—can’t spell it, too lazy to google.), Reese (Witherspoon).
While I think of Stacy Keach and Ashley Wilkes when you ask me about these “gender neutral” names, in real life, I’m going to assume Stacy and Ashley are girls.
My brother has one of these names, so it gets “boy”, but I’ve known only one other guy besides him named Morgan and about 4 gazillion women named Morgan (and many female black cats), so that’s the hardest one for me.
What about Casey, Cameron, and Ryan? I can see those going either way.
male names that are adopted as female names seem to be more common than the other way round. in fact, what are the names that were originally females and are now males?
I can’t think of any. Usually any name that can also be a surname, is originally male, which is why Whitney is originally a guy’s name.
I can’t believe Taylor is a girl’s name for most of you. I always think of Taylor Lautner.
Taylor Swift is the first Taylor I think of.
A. Whitney Brown is a male Whitney that comes to mind.
What about the name Corey? Male or Female?
Corey is male, Cory female to me.
I really can’t think of a single one, and google’s no help. This article suggests Angel and Logan were once more unisex and are now more male. That’s about as close as I think we’re likely to get.
Angel is common amongst Hispanics. I’ve never heard anyone with it who was not of Spanish-speaking background.
How about Alexis? Male or female? It comes from Russian “Alexey” or “Alexei” and exists as Alexios in Greek and Alessio in Italian.
Alexey / Alexios are unambiguously male in their native languages but have established female variants (Alexia–but that’s an extremely uncommon name, this name comes from a similar etymology as Alexander “defender of men” or Alexandros in Greek, and is thus considered extremely masculine in all the cultures where it was originally used.)
But Alexis is so uncommon a name in America I don’t know how people would take it, despite knowing the etymology of it and its history I think a lot of Americans would almost think of it s a stripper-esque style name (but maybe that’s just me.)
Alexander is a good example of an unambiguously male name in America though, you’d name a woman Alexandra for sure, only extreme outliers would name a woman Alexander.
Once you hear of a girl or two having a certain name that was associated with boys, parents seem to dump it from consideration for their sons. The first Madisons were considered trendy with a unisex name; for the last 20 years or more it seems to be just a girl’s name.
and when a mermaid calls herself by that name, that’s it.
We have three Alexises in our middle school, all girls (and none strippers, as far as I know). We generally have one or two Angels per year, about evenly split between boys and girls.