General Claire Chennault.
General Laverne G. Saunders.
Marion Morrison (aka John Wayne).
Chennault was born in 1893. Saunders was born in 1903, and Wayne was born in 1907. Were Claire, Laverne, and Marion ‘girl’s names’ in the late-19th and early 20th Centuries? Were they masculine names? Or, like some popular names today, were they in flux between the genders?
In flux. Claire could also be spelled Clare or Clair and those spellings, too, were in use for either sex (viz Clare Boothe Luce, very female writer-politician). About the only exception is Marian, as I don’t think I can recall a man with that spelling.
Lieutenant General Leslie Groves, born August 17, 1896, was head of the Manhattan Project. He had quite the mannish mug.
So, when did Leslie become a female-only name?
For the answer to all your name popularity needs, check out the amazingly fascinating Baby Name Voyager. Now if anyone could explain to me the rise in the name “Gannon” I’d be impressed…
My friend’s father’s name was Leslie. He always complained about people calling and asking to speak to Mrs. Leslie Lastname. He named my friend, his first son, Dana.
My uncle was born in 1930, so it was sometime after that.
All of us that grew up on The Legend of Zelda finally reached child-bearing age.
The enormous british wrestler Big Daddy … real name Sirley Crabtree.
I work with a gentlemen named Shirley. Most folks don’t realize this, he has been going by Kip for as long as I have known him, about 20 years. He says in Minnesota where he is originally from there are many men named Shirley.
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Among my classmates (1979 baby here) was a girl named Devon and a guy named Shanon (not sure of spelling).
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And I thought the LoZ villain’s name was spelled “Ganon”?
According to the chart above, maybe in the '50s or '60s. Sometime around when my uncle Les and Les Claypool were born.
I know of three professional male athletes named Shannon. The most famous is retired NFL star Shannon Sharpe.
A century ago, Hazel was a pretty popular male name.
Some guy did a study on “name gender drift” a while back–I can’t find it online, but his thesis was that over time names tend to drift from masculine to unisex to feminine, but very seldom in the opposite direction. Once a “critical percentage” of a name’s owners become female, parents will stop giving it to boys. Gail, Carol, Shirley, Leslie, Dana, and many other names that I can’t think of right now went through this process. Robin and Alex might be going through it right now.
Don’t forget Evelyn Waugh. There have been approximately 4.7 * 10[sup]5[/sup] threads on such subjects by now, and his name has come up in probably all of them.
Evelyn as a boy’s name was definitely extinct by the time I was born, but there was a male Leslie or two among my elementary classmates in the 1960s.
Wow, that site is amazing, thanks for posting it! I will definitely use that for my fiction writing from now on.
“Beverly” was a fairly popular name for both boys and girls at the turn of the century, as was “Florence.” Both of them drifted toward being female names as well.
I am a female Lesley, born in 1960. My father was born Leslie in 1913. I’ve always gone by my middle name, however. I wasn’t actually named for Dad. My mom always wanted to name a girl Lesley and went ahead, even though she’d married one!
That was my Dad’s name. He was born in 1929.
