It’s Terry.
Nope. But some people tend to write a longer version of their name, like Christina or Christopher, when actually putting it on paper. IME, YMMV
If they just write down “Chris,” without context, I will still have no way of knowing for sure.
Regards, Carol
Sydney
Ariel is, on the whole, rare enough that popularity in the Jewish community could skew the results if used differently, and I’ll bet it’s mostly a Jewish man’s name (it’s gradually becoming Unisex in Israel, but I suspect Jewish naming conventions in the US are probably lagging by a generation or two.)
Speaking of Hebrew, Modern Israeli Hebrew has a butt-load of truly unisex names – Sharon, Chen, Ziv, Yuval, Adi, Noam… just off the top of my head. Almost anything non-biblical (and some biblical ones, like Ariel and Daniel) are fair game for either gender.
I’d say “Dakota.”
One name I’m partial to is Madison. It was used for a man in the novel The 480 and for a woman in Splash.
Darryl can be either a man or a woman.
Lee or Leigh, ditto.
Lou, though Lew is definitely a man.
Sidney/Sydney, man/woman.
Kelly.
Francis/Frances.
Valerie/Valery.
Valentine.
Terry is a man, Terri is a woman.
Those are the ones that immediately come to mind. I’m sure I’ll think of more later.
I would, BTW, NEVER stick a child with a sappy diminutive by putting, say, “Bo” on his birth certificate instead of “Beauregard” or “Beaudine,” or whatever.* My mother was named Betty; I made sure my daughter was Elizabeth. She’s now legally free to use whatever form she wishes (and does).
*I say this because I detest the name that’s on my birth certificate. I never use it, but I’m still obligated to have it on my driver’s license, passport, etc.
Back in the early 80s in Rochester NY I knew a couple both named Chris. [standard male - female couple that is.:p]
For me, it’s Pat. That’s the only name for which I don’t have an instant gender bias towards.
Someone mentioned “Joe” upthread, and I think I must know 100:1 guys:gals that are “Joe”. That would be waaaay down on the list for me.
Of those names, the only ones I’ve encountered in Spain in the forms listed are Carol, which is always a woman, and Alex, which is gender-neutral but always an abbreviation: any formal document will list Alejandro or Alejandra.
I should bookmark this OP as an example of “saying ‘Western’ when one means ‘the US’”.
That’s a good one…my cousin’s wife has 3 grandkids, two boys and a girl. One of them is named Dakota, and I can never remember if it’s a boy or girl. Worse yet they call the kid “Koty” which sounds like “Cody” which to me is a boy’s name. (it’s a girl)
I would assume male for Alex, Andy, Billy, Bobby, Charlie, Dale, Randy, Rory, Sam, and Tony.
I would assume female for Aubrey, Dana, Jody, Madison, Morgan, Sidney, and Whitney.
I would say wtf about Georgie, because who is named that in the US? And I don’t know the name Michel.
Corey
I have to say, I consider this comment kind of dickish. I didn’t ask you to limit yourself to the names I used. Feel free to contribute your own. If I am making a list of examples from my own perspective, of course they’re going to come from American culture. This thread is a solicitation of opinions in a forum about opinions. Contribute your own opinions about gender neutral names. Why do you expect an American poster to come up with Spanish examples?
Jamie is probably the most gender-neutral name I know of, in my frame of reference.
Right, because none of those names exist anywhere else in world, such as Britain or Australia. Just get over yourself, please.
When I was in high school, I knew a girl named Georgette who was a real babe. Usually, we just called her George.
There was the film Georgy Girl back in the '60s, though it was made in the UK. Here’s the theme:
It’s also a not-uncommon male name in Latin America, and I’d suspect that many of the baby-boy Ariels in that list were Hispanic.
One of the longest gender neutral names has to be Mackenzie (as in Phillips and Astin).
To be fair: as Filbert already mentioned, many of the names in the OP aren’t gender neutral in Britain or Australia - or are vanishingly rare (such as Randy, which means horny to us and so isn’t often bestowed upon people’s newborn babes). Haydn, Sydney and Rory are names I think of as unambiguously male, Hollywood starlets notwithstanding. Spelling often differentiates the genders - for instance, Francis is always a man’s name while Frances is always a woman’s name. Adrian/Adrienne. Jo/Joe. Tony/Toni. The last two Robins I encountered were both male, as was the last Lesley. I would say Pat is more often male as Patricias frequently go by Trish here, and that seems less common in the US from my observations.
We don’t have the exact patterns of name/gender distribution as the US and therefore it’s going to be more of a US-centric discussion than a broadly Western one. But that’s OK, it’s the nature of the board, which is primarily made up of US members.
Chris was still the first thing that came to mind when I read the subject of this thread. I met three generations of a family who went by the gender neutral, shortened versions of their names: Chris(tine), George(ina) and Max(ine). Max was a newborn and her great grandmother was complaining that her name was gender neutral!