Given that chapters & sections traditionally start on a fresh page, on average a chapter or section will end mid-page. So any growth up to one half-page’s worth in that chapter/section will result in no increase in page count.
Separately, widow / orphan control on individual pages has the same effect. There’s wasted space on the English page which can be used to accommodate the little bitty words more common in other languages without needing to add lines to the page.
Finally, full justification has the same effect. If it’s being used at all, you can on average cram a few more, short 1-3 letter words or words or a few more short syllables onto many, not all, of the lines.
With the net effect that e.g., Spanish prose fits more words onto a page, into a chapter, and into the total page count of a book than one might initially expect just counting the e.g., characters of the two texts.
There is a covert rule: Traditionally masculine names can transition into common usage as feminine names, but it never ever goes the other way, and usually, once there is a critical mass of usage as a feminine name, it stops being used much at all as a masculine name.
An interesting thought. But is it true long-term or just right now?
I’m 60-something. The habit of naming girls with heretofore boy’s names seems to have become mainstream when I was about 30 & has only increased in popularity since. What I don’t know is whether the same effect obtained in the 1950s or 1900s or 1850s.
Names come and go from being fashionable. If, e.g., Tyler was to eventually switch back from being predominantly a female name as it is now to a male name, we’d expect that transition to be at least 50 or 100 years after it peaked in popularity as a female name. Which peak may have been a few years ago or may still be 20 years in the future. [Please nobody get hung up on “Tyler” specifically; I pulled that example out of my butt, not out of any research on name/gender demographics.]
TL;DR:
If indeed the femalization of formerly male names is a recent development, we won’t know whether there is or isn’t a “rule” against going the other way until enough time has elapsed for said “rule” to appear or not appear as it will.
I think that how you speak a foreign language depends a lot on how you learned it in the first place. If you study it formally, you are studying the language in a formal context; i.e., proper grammar, syntax, etc. If you learn the language while you are immersed in the culture itself, you’re going to learn it in the context of how ordinary people in that culture actually speak it.
A few years ago the new leader of the Conservative Party in Canada was Erin O’Toole. Thus I learned at a very advanced age that Erin can be a male name. Obviously I wasn’t paying much attention to this sort of detail before.
How much time? The example you chose is interesting, not because of the name itself but because of how recently the change happened. You didn’t choose a name/spelling that changed further back such as Beverly,Evelyn, Leslie or Marion - possibly because within our (I’m 58) lifetime , those names have always been female.
Here is a list of the 1000 most common names given to male babies in the U.S.:
Which ones seem to be new to you? Where do they seem to come from? I have some suspicions about where they come from, but I’ll allow you to make your guesses first before I give mine so I don’t influence yours.
Or Carroll. I remember around 40 years ago, probably, being extremely surprised that Carroll O’Connor was a man’s name (and he was pretty old by then. Likewise, Marion Morrison (aka John Wayne). Definitely not a phenomenon that began in the last 30 years.
Erin is a bit of a strange example. It began as feminine, but as the feminine personification of a country. As a human name, it can be used for any gender, but it’s worth noting that, in the US at least, its popularity was never high as a boy’s name, and that peaked 50 years ago with less than 400 registering the name for a boy. Cite: Erin - Wikipedia).
Francis is for him, Frances is for her. Caroll is for him, Carol is for her. More obscurely, Vivyan is for him, Vivian is for her. At least sometimes, Marion is for him, Marian is for her.
And yes, there are other 1800s to mid-1900s popular given names that are gender-neutral with no spelling variations.
Regardless of spellings,* those names are rarely given to boys any more. And many do not have spelling distinctions at all. It’s not a recent phenomenon.
*I don’t think you’re right about the Caroll vs Carol distinction, but it doesn’t really matter. Carol for a boy goes back hundreds of years. And the Caroll spelling is, I’m sure, currently more used for girls than boys in this country at least.
ETA: It occurs to me that this is going astray from the topic at hand, so I think I’ll stop with this.
Which of those names from the 1800s to mid1900s is now gender neutral? Perhaps it used to be that “Marion” was for boys - but currently ( and probably for the past 80 years or so ) either spelling is exclusively used for girls - naming a boy Marion in even 1950 would have been like naming him “Susan”. The only names that stayed gender- neutral for a long time were nicknames that were based on different male /female names like “Pat” or “Chris”
“Gender neutral” was a very poor choice of words on my part. Thanks for pointing that out. What I meant was there were a bunch of once-popular names with no widely used gender-indicative spelling difference.
E.g. as to spelling alone, “Marion” might be either a boy or girl. Though as you say, even 60 years ago a boy named Marion would be right up there with a boy named Sue.
We had a Marion Barber III (b.1983) here on the Bears back in 2011. The only Marions I know, though, are … well, him and the former DC mayor (who was born before 1950). It’s not a name I come across often with either sex.
English has incomprehensible “two-word verbs” ( a verb combined with a preposition)
on and off are…complicated.
“The light went off.” - Means that the light has stopped functioning.
“The smoke detector alarm went off”. Means the alarm has started to function.
Re: male/female names. In my elementary school in the mid-1950s, one classmate was a boy named Theada. All through school, each new teacher would say, “Theada? Where is she?” It’s not like his parents didn’t know what was coming; He was Theada, Jr…
I’m now 73, and my next-door neighbor is a guy named Gail. He’s about the same age as me.
Erin O’Toole has to be about 10 years or more younger than me. I realized not long after that the neighbour’s daughter’s husband was also an Erin. I’d assumed when I took them misdirected mail that it was for the granddaughter. Then I worked at a polling station (for the election where Erin O’Toole lost…) and saw the voters’ list.
When I was about 8, I remember my dad testing me for the capitals - he said hint, the capital of Prince Edward Island is a girl’s name. I guess back then, Charlotte was not a common name (in the age of DIck, Jane, and Sally) and I had never heard the name before.
I recall reading once that Madison became a girl’s name after the mermaid in Splash made up her name based on the Madison Ave. street sign.
Plus, the trick nowadays seems to be to make up as bizarre a child’s name as you can, especially for girl’s names. Do other languages have this problem? I recall a news item a decade or two ago where parents in France were suing the government because it refused to allow “Cerise” (Cherry) as an acceptable name for their daughter. I wonder how they tell whether immigrant names are “acceptable”?
The rule in France is that you can call your child any name you like - there are no lists of permitted or forbidden names. But if the registrat thinks the name is going to be problematic - offensive, humiliating, that kind of thing - they can object and ultimately the matter can be decided by a court. But even if the decision is to refuse registration, it’s context-specific. It’s not a general ban on the name; just a refusal to allow it in this instance.
I’m sceptical that Cerise has ever been refused as a name. This source in fact offers it as an example of a name that is permitted, in contrast to Vanille. The acceptability of “immigrant names” is not an issue in itself; France has a long tradition of immigration and lots of names that are common in France are the result of immigration. The question to be asked in relation to “immigrant names” is the same as for any other names; it is detrimental to the interests of the child to give it this name?