I take a lot of pride in being accurate and professional in my business correspondence. I did not expect today would be any exception to that.
I was sent an email from another firm I’m working with regarding a document to be reviewed. The wording of the email was, “Would it work for your schedules for our associate, Lindsay Smith* to review [the document] next Thursday?” I replied that that would be fine, and that I had already reserved a conference room for Ms. Smith to review the document in question on that date.
Separately, I’m keeping a dramatis of folks involved in the case, and since Lindsay was new, I went to look her up on her firm’s website for contact info. Only to discover, as you might imagine from the thread title, that Lindsay is, in fact, a he.
I tend to be fairly cautious about the assumptions I make with regard to people’s names. Sean, Terry, Jake, Sam: these are all things I look up to verify. But Lindsay was not even in my head as potentially ambiguous! I’m not happy about having made myself look like an idiot in an email that had several people (including Lindsay) copied on it.
So <grumble grumble> would YOU have assumed “Lindsay” was female, or is that one that would have made you wonder and check? And what other names have caught you off-guard in the same way?
I would think Lindsay was mostly likely a woman, but I learned not make gender assumptions in correspondence after a mistake like that a long time ago. In your letter I would have used ‘Lindsay’ instead of ‘Ms. Smith’, or ‘your associate’ until I found knew the person’s gender. It’s awkward, but I have a ton of email correspondence with people all over the world and have no clue what their gender is based on some of the names. It’s mostly just technical stuff and doesn’t require a lot of formality. If I see someone else has used a gender specific reference I’ll go with that, and remember who it was in case it turns out to be wrong and then I can blame them.
ETA: And yeah, poor guy. I have a cousin named Ashley. Probably the last guy with that name since Gone With the Wind was written.
I think of Ashley as a unisex name. It doesn’t even seem particularly girly to me. Case in point: Ashley Young.
Similarly, I don’t see any problems with Lindsay as male name, on principle, I just haven’t run into any male Lindsays. I’m putting it on my list of names that might cause gender mix-ups.
I used to work with a man named Kim Lee. He frequently received mail addressed to Ms Lee.
One of my current sales contacts is a man named Stacey. I know there are male Staceys, Stacey Keach springs to mind, but I don’t immediately think male when I see it. His emails include “Mr” in the signature.
I work with a male Lindsey and my daughter is a Lindsey. I knew an older man named Lindsay and I work with a female Lindsay. Looking through our online corporate directory, which has pictures, it looks like “Lindsey” is split pretty evenly between male and female while about 80% with the “Lindsay” spelling are female.
I actually generally assume a Lindsay will be male. No idea why, but I do. I don’t think stats would back me up, and the first Lindsay I knew was a girl.
“Lindsay/Lindsey” were not particularly common names until Lindsay Wagner became a well-known person. I don’t know of any female Lindsays/Lindseys over 40, and all the Lindsays/Lindseys over 40 that I’ve known were men.
So I would have assumed female. Other names that can be problematic: Terry, Sandy, Stacy just off the top of my head. I guess if they spell it ending with an ‘i’ I’d be more likely to assume female.
I might have used “him/her” instead of “Ms. Smith.” Alternatively, on encountering a gender-neutral name like that, I might have endeavored to look him up before emailing him (instead of after :smack:) to determine gender so I could use the correct honorific.
I have also known men named Gayle, Lynn, Sandy (short for Sanford), and Lynn.
These are all valid points, but as I noted previously, the name never triggered in my head as gender-neutral. Had it done so, I would certainly have looked it up before composing the email.
I have a cousin named Lindsay, who’s the only Lindsay I know. He does get mistaken for a woman quite a bit. I also had a great uncle called Lynn. Lynne I would assume to be female, but without the terminal ‘e’ it could go either way.
Sandy is commonly a male name in the UK, it’s apparently a Scots nickname for Alexander.
I have a male friend named Ashley. I don’t think of it automatically as female, though definitely more so than not. But it’s stil unisex in mind. Same with Lindsay, no matter the spelling. Sandy, too. I probably think of that as slightly more male than female. I did not know about Sean, though. Or Jake, for that matter. Never heard either refer to a woman, to my knowledge.
