In other words: it seems to me a little like coming in and arguing that all those stupid yuppie Americans who name their kid “Christopher” are culture-raping peasants because they don’t use the pronunciation “Χριστόφορος”.
Since I started this hijack, I’ll chime in: it is a bit pretentious, and I should clarify that I only do it once, to make a point about the Irish language (about which many people are ignorant), and thereafter always use the individual’s preferred pronunciation of his or her own name.
I don’t mind when names are borrowed through oral tradition and change organically. (Caitlín is, after all, a borrowed name in the first place, not a native Irish one.) What I dislike is when people read someone else’s language and borrow the spelling only. I think it’s a different phenomenon. The former is sharing, the latter is taking. To give other examples, it would be like pronounced “Theresa” with the -th- as in “thing” or “Christopher” with the -ch- as in “church.” If someone does that deliberately, it’s one thing; I don’t have to approve of everything in the world. What I hate is when it’s done out of ignorance, which seems to be the case most of the time.
Huh, guess I just happened to meet the few girl Rorys (Rories??) first.
Probably because of the rising popularity of this band. 
(I saw a concert poster for them once with Jimmy Carter’s face on it… Hilarious.)
Two of my nephews have three last names. Their given names are Tyler and Carter, their middle names are the same as their mom’s last name, and their last name is–of course–the same as their dad’s last name.
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”)
See also: “Mac/Mc/Mykatrocity”, stupidity thereof.
Also Courtney Duncan (no relation, AFAICT).
Just a couple mundane, pointless notes for the thread:
The since-cancelled TV show Eli Stone featured a father-daughter lawyer team named Jordan and Morgan Weathersby. Took me about the whole first season to keep straight who was which.
I went to high school with a guy named Rene, though he insisted it be pronounced “Rennie.” The only other Rennie I’d ever heard of was former Pittsburgh Pirate Rennie Stennett (short for Renaldo), so I guess he figured “Rennie” sounded more manly than “Renay.”
I recall a movie I saw when I was home sick from school as a kid. This Brit guy was talking to a lovely young woman and she introduced herself as, “Hillary.” He responded, “Hillary? That’s a boy’s name!”
It was a black and white, probably late 30s movie. It just struck me as odd as a child, since the only Hillary I’d ever heard of was a female character on one of my mom’s soaps.
Heidi Klum and Seal just had a kid: Lou Samuel.
Yep, it’s a girl. So she has a boy’s first and last name.
With regard to Caitlín only an ignoramus here in Ireland would pronounce it “Kate-lynn”. If someone were reading it out they would usually either go with the Irish pronunciation or with simply “Kathleen”. The name “Katelynn” with the Irish spelling is often considered a “Dumb Yankicism” by many here.
Lou Dillon is a French actress and model (and daughter of Jane Birkin), though I’m not even sure if that’s her real name. The French love their odd nicknames, especially for girls.
I’m not sure about English names that were feminine and became at least partly masculine, but In Romance tongues, there’s the name Maria (Mary) which is very important because of the Influence of Catholicism in Latin countries. This is masculinized to the very popular Mario.
Leslie is not really a crossover, more an spelling mistake. It used to be Leslie for a man and Lesley for a woman, but you are right that female Leslies have started appearing (and male ones have probably become rarer).
Laurie, for a man, is an abbreviated, nickname form of Laurence (or Lawrence). It fairly common in Britain, and perfectly masculine. I don’t think there are any (certainly not many) women or girls called Laurence. I think Laurie for a woman is generally a nickname form of Laura, and found more in the U.S. than the U.K. Anyway, Laurie is not a crossover name, merely a result of the ‘contraction’ of two different, distinctively male and female names happening to lead to the same result.
The same goes for Lou I think. It is a contraction of either Louis (male) or Louise (female).
Was Alexis once exclusively male? You still occasionally find a male Alexis, but I think its more commonly female now.
Over fifty years ago, my sister took ballet lessons from two women (sisters themselves) named John and Dick. (I think the story was that their father had really, really wished he had had boys.) Those don’t seem to have caught on as girls’ names.
This is really going back a ways, but Florence was originally a male name - as in Florence “Flo” Zeigfield.
The classical M to F names, as noted above, are Evelyn, Francis, Leslie, Ashley and Vivian. The process has been going on a while - my great-aunt, who would be close to one hundred if she were still alive, was named Henrietta, but went through her whole life as “Tom”.
That is not correct. Mario continues Latin Marius, and is a rather old name.
Gotta love name threads, where the prescriptivists show their true colors.
Actually, it was spelled Florenz.
I just realized that this is a zombie thread, and that that much of the stuff I posted yesterday, particularly about Laurie, I already posted two years ago. :o However, I can’t let the following nonsense go:
Florence was originally (the English version of) the name of a city. Florence Nightingale was born there and named after the city of her birth (and because her parents thought it was a romantic place, I think). It became a popular female name because Florence Nightingale became a famous and much admired woman.
As FairyChatMom points out Zeigfeld (not “Zeigfield”) was called Florenz, not Florence. There is no real connection.
Also as already pointed out, Francis, Leslie, and Vivian are all names that, for a long time, have existed in both male and female forms. It is possible that they started out long ago as exclusively male names and that the female forms developed later, but neither you nor anyone else had provided evidence that that is what has happened. There are lots of names that occur in both male and female forms. These ones are unusual only in that they although they differ in spelling, they do not differ in pronunciation.
I do not think that anyone has provided evidence that names like Evelyn and Ashley (and I will add another: Aubrey) were ever exclusively male, either. Maybe they were originally non gendered names.
However, I think it probably is true that once a name comes to be widely seen as girlish, boys are no longer given it. It is widely considered fine to give girls boyish names, but giving a girly name to a boy is a big no-no. I guess sexism is alive.