# Girl names that used to be boy names **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 2, 2009, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371 "2009-10-02T17:35:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Springtime_for_Spacers)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2011, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/141 "2011-10-05T23:45:06Z")
> [@Infovore](#): > > Another male (albeit fictional) Gail was Gail Wynand from Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead,” who was a tough-as-nails ex-street kid who rose to run a major newspaper (think William Randolph Hearst). I was put off a bit at first by the fact that he had such a feminine name, but by the time I finished the book it seemed perfectly natural. > > The only male “Robyn” I’ve ever encountered is Robyn Miller, brother of Rand–they were the creators of the old “Myst” game. I knew a male Gale. 🙂 Edited to add and one of my uni lecturers was an English male Robin and another was an American female Robin (I think that was the spelling). ---
**Author:** ![missred](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/missred/32/14096_2.png) [@missred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/missred)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/142 "2011-10-06T01:46:58Z")
Over the years, here in the mid-south USA, I’ve worked with several men named Dorris. Most were 55+ and the ones who were younger were juniors. Doing volunteer work in the same area, I’ve come into contact with several older men named Car®oll (sometimes only one “r”, but always two "l"s) and several named Florence. For the trifecta, I went to school (midwestern USA, late sixties to 1981) with a whole mess of guys named Stacey, Tracey, Kim, Courtney, Dana and Leslie. Also, my cousin and his wife gave their son their common middle name of Lynn. All of these would be considered girl names now. ---
**Author:** ![Imasquare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Imasquare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Imasquare)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/143 "2011-10-06T09:56:52Z")
> [@Dr.Girlfriend](#): > > We have a 70-ish female friend of the family named Michael. Her father was disappointed she wasn’t a boy, they didn’t have a girl’s name picked out, and her mother was out of it after giving birth, so her dad named her Michael anyways. The lady who played the mother on The Waltons is also called Michael. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/144 "2011-10-06T10:26:31Z")
> [@Kalypso](#): > > Not a very common name, but my grandfather was Francis, after St. Francis. All the younger Fran’s I’ve met have been female. Francesco and Francesca are about equally old, though. ---
**Author:** ![Septima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Septima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Septima)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/145 "2011-10-06T13:49:37Z")
All this talk about Oscar Wilde made me want to link to the BBC documentary “Oscar Wilde Himself”, which has extensive interviews with both Merlin Holland (Oscar Wildes grandson) and Lady Alice Douglas (Bosie Douglas’s great-grand niece.) Granted, it’s from 1985, but it’s fascinating to see how close the past really is - the children of people who knew Oscar Wilde are still alive, he is barely out of living memory, even today. [link](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcIClng5K94) And the Ladys name even gives me an appropriate segue into something relevant to this thread, since Douglas is one of many rare names that have crossed the other way, having been a female first name, but now being primarily used as a male one. I believe J.R.R. brother was named Hillary, which I find slightly amusing. And next time you feel the need to complain about “Yuppies” spelling names with unnecessary Ys, blame Oscar Wilde 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/146 "2011-10-06T14:01:30Z")
> [@Septima](#): > > And the Ladys name even gives me an appropriate segue into something relevant to this thread, since Douglas is one of many rare names that have crossed the other way, having been a female first name, but now being primarily used as a male one. Douglas is originally a place name, meaning (literally) “black blue” and (figuatively) “dark water.” ---
**Author:** ![Septima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Septima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Septima)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/147 "2011-10-06T14:32:45Z")
Well, yes. I was referring strictly to it’s history as a name for people. BTW, does anyone know if there is a word for names that are also objects? Not whose origin is a place-name, or whose root is something or other, but where the word and the thing are the same. The most obvious examples are flower names, but there are others. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/148 "2011-10-06T14:32:54Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > Douglas is originally a place name, meaning (literally) “black blue” and (figuatively) “dark water.” Surely you mean it literally means “black green” or “black grey”? ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/149 "2011-10-06T14:35:14Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > Heck, my own son Kendall suffers from this - he got a first name that’s really a last name, and it turns out it’s become wildly more popular as a girl’s name since the late 1980s or early 1990s (which caught me by surprise as he was born in 2003, but I had yet to meet or hear of a female Kendall until after he was born). I am afraid I cannot hear the name Kendall without thinking of [mint cake](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendal_Mint_Cake). ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/150 "2011-10-06T17:29:03Z")
> [@Greg\_Charles](#): > > John Wayne’s real first name was Marion, but it sounds too much like Marian to be used as a boy’s name now. Maybe there are even girls named Marion now. My spousal unit’s godmother’s name was Marion (with an O). She died a few years back and was in her 70s at the time. So there’s at least one female “Marion” who’s been around about as long as John Wayne. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Onimous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ea5d25/32.png) [@Ann\_Onimous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Onimous)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/151 "2011-10-06T21:56:01Z")
> [@Serenata67](#): > > I still can’t get over the feminizing of names that end in “son” (Madison, Emerson, etc.) “Son” is masculine. It means SON. It would be like naming your male offspring “Emersdaughter” (or if you really wanted to get all Scandinavian with the patronymics “Emersdottir”) My great uncle’s middle name was Madison. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/152 "2011-10-06T22:34:35Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#): > > Surely you mean it literally means “black green” or “black grey”? No: [nerdly answer to follow] although _glas_ encompasses shades of what English speakers call green and grey as well as blue, the darkest register (i.e the part that would be modified with “black”) is what English-speakers would call blue. Since the given name comes from a river name in Lanarkshire, where Welsh only gave way to Gaelic in the mid-middle ages, it is probably a calque on Brythonic _glas_ rather than Old Irish _glas_, which is cognate but loses some of its semantic range to _gorm_ and _uaine_. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/153 "2011-10-06T22:35:50Z")
> [@Serenata67](#): > > I still can’t get over the feminizing of names that end in “son” (Madison, Emerson, etc.) “Son” is masculine. It means SON. It would be like naming your male offspring “Emersdaughter” (or if you really wanted to get all Scandinavian with the patronymics “Emersdottir”) I feel the same about “ **Mac** kenzie.” ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2011, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/154 "2011-10-07T00:53:21Z")
I read a romance novel a long while ago and the heroine had a masculine name of **Douglass**. ( maybe with two s’s, maybe with one) and she had said it was an old scottish name , but I cannot remember if she mean the clan or for women. It was a time travel romancey kind. It has always stuck with me and I’ve never found a female version of Douglas/s. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2011, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/155 "2011-10-07T02:16:08Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > No: [nerdly answer to follow] although _glas_ encompasses shades of what English speakers call green and grey as well as blue, the darkest register (i.e the part that would be modified with “black”) is what English-speakers would call blue. Since the given name comes from a river name in Lanarkshire, where Welsh only gave way to Gaelic in the mid-middle ages, it is probably a calque on Brythonic _glas_ rather than Old Irish _glas_, which is cognate but loses some of its semantic range to _gorm_ and _uaine_. Then you need to fix the wiki. ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2011, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/156 "2011-10-07T02:28:57Z")
> [@Shirley\_Ujest](#): > > I read a romance novel a long while ago and the heroine had a masculine name of **Douglass**. ( maybe with two s’s, maybe with one) and she had said it was an old scottish name , but I cannot remember if she mean the clan or for women. It was a time travel romancey kind. > It has always stuck with me and I’ve never found a female version of Douglas/s. A real life female Douglass is [URL = [Douglas Sheffield, Baroness Sheffield - Wikipedia](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Douglas_Sheffield)] Douglass Sheffield ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2011, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/157 "2011-10-07T13:16:31Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > Lanarkshire, where Welsh only gave way to Gaelic in the mid-middle ages :eek: They used to speak Welsh in Lanarkshire, in the middle of Scotland? (About 250 miles from Wales, mostly through English territory.) ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2011, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/158 "2011-10-07T14:51:24Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > :eek: They used to speak Welsh in Lanarkshire, in the middle of Scotland? (About 250 miles from Wales, mostly through English territory.) Technically, it was British (the phase of the language before Old Welsh), but yes. “Lanark” is from a British word for “grove,” now “llanerch” in Welsh. It’s known as the Old Welsh North. Mind you, there must have been a sharp drop-off in British speakers after the British kingdom of Strathclyde fell about 1000 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Ashtar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ea924/32.png) [@Lord\_Ashtar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Ashtar)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2011, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/159 "2011-10-07T15:00:21Z")
At the New Year’s party I attended earlier this year, a couple had a little girl named Elliott. I blame Scrubs for that one. ---
**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2011, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371/160 "2011-10-07T20:35:08Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > As **FairyChatMom** points out Zeigfeld (not “Zeigfield”) was called Florenz, not Florence. You mean [Ziegfeld](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flo_Ziegfeld), not Zeigfeld. > [@Greg\_Charles](#): > > Maybe there are even girls named Marion now. Marion Ross (Mrs. C on _Happy Days_) was originally Marian, but changed the spelling in 1941, when she was 13, already [anticipating the day her name would appear on a marquee.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Ross) William Randolph Hearst’s constant companion, however, was named Marion when born in 1897 – she never changed the spelling, although her last name of Douras was supplanted by Davies in the belief that a more British-sounding surname would help her prospects. > [@irishgirl](#): > > I mean, seriously- ‘my 4 year old daughter’s name means “one who cures animal hides”- isn’t that just darling?’ > > I don’t get it. I’m guessing the people who game that name to a girl are thinking more along the lines of “has money to go to salons and get bombarded by UV rays”. 😉 > [@Eve](#): > > Aren’t there a couple of young actresses now named Evan? That was only a boys’ name when I was a kid. Yep – [Evan Rachel Wood](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Rachel_Wood), for one. (And incidentally, you’re quoted in my first link above. Just coincidence, I swear.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girl-names-that-used-to-be-boy-names/512371.md?page=9)