When one hears the name Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall for the first time, one can pretty reasonably assume that the person in question is about as male and English as a person can be. Similarly, when you hear first the names Lyudmila Pavlichenko or Valentina Tereshkova*, you can probably guess at their gender and ethnicity with a fair degree of accuracy.
Other names, for example Nick Park, are not so easy to guess. Probably male, but there’s always Stevie Nicksto confound things. Maybe European by last name, but could be of Korean descent, like John Park.
So, help me find the most ambiguous name. Groundrules: it has to be a real name, not necessarily of a person whom you can document, but using real components. No fair Nyrkasham Treastimacsolom.
We can, if you’d like, do the two portions of the question as separate pieces, that is, find the name most ambiguous with regard to ethnicity, and as a separate topic, look for the most ambiguous with regard to gender, since that will likely be the shorter discussion, Pat.
*yes, these are names off the top of my head.
Lee is last name in both English-speaking and East Asian countries. In English-speaking countries, Lee can be male or female. I’m not sure if it’s gender-linked as a first name in Asian countries, but I have known Chinese females with the first name Li.
One famously ambiguous name is the name of the protagonist Johnny Rico in the novel Starship Troopers. We pretty much realize he’s male, but his ethnicity is apparently intentionally sidestepped until the end of the book. I think the idea was to present him as an “everyman” character whose particular ancestry doesn’t matter. With a name like his, he could easily be seen as white, black, Asian, or Native American since “Johnny” is such a blah, intercultural name and “Rico”, while Spanish, could be held by virtually anyone in a country once ruled by Spain, and many of those countries were, and are, multiracial.
At the end, he gives some details of his background, and we find out that he is
Filipino
N.B. I’m not sure why I spoilered that, because his ethnicity has no important meaning to the plot - rather the point is that his ethnicity was completely irrelevant to the story.
One common gender-ambiguous first name in English speaking countries is Kelly, which I believe is ultimately of Irish origin but can now be found anywhere English is spoken and perhaps other places as well. Morgan is another gender-ambiguous name - it’s the name of a famous African-American male actor but is also the name of an anti-heroine in Arthurian lore, who, in some versions, has notably un-sisterly relations with her own brother and begats a son who is completely messed up.
There are several other first names that were notably gender-ambiguous in the past but are now more or less considered feminine names. Examples are Ashley and Shirley. When I was a kid, one of the biggest “huh?” moments that we went through with Gone With the Wind was “Why is there a guy named Ashley?”
Jordan is a very neutral first name–As a teacher, I’ve had equal numbers male/female, white/black/Hispanic and upper/middle/lower class kids named Jordan.
Here’s a list of some potentially gender-ambiguous names.
Combine one of those with a racially-ambiguous last name, such as virtually any Anglo or Hispanic name, and you have a nicely ambiguous name. Combine an Anglo first name and a Hispanic last name to add a cultural or linguistic ambiguity - maybe Dale de la Cruz is an English-speaking New Yorker of Puerto Rican ancestry born and raised in Brooklyn, or maybe he is a Spanish-speaking Dominican whose parents were big fans of Dale Earnhardt.
I seem to recall hearing an anecdote about a recent immigrant to the US who moved to Northern Virginia, noticed all of the things named after Robert E. Lee, and wondered if Robert E. Lee was Asian.
And there are some first names that are feminine in one language and masculine in another. One big one is Yuri. It’s a girl’s name in Japanese but a boy’s name in Russian.
Per Manda JO I think Jordan Lee is stronger - Jordan really is pretty evenly male/female in my mind, while I think Pat leans female and Kim definitely does.
Actually, the reader is specifically led to believe that his family is of Argentine origin because his parents were in Buenos Aires during the bombing. It is never specified why they happened to be there, but a reader would naturally assume. Also, IIRC, his father calls him Juanito. The assumption is that his given name is Juan but he goes by the English version, John, for whatever reason. Given his actual ancestry, Juan would be a commonplace given name, but the -ito is a Spanish construction. Again, that doesn’t really mean anything. I frequently call my son Arturo or Arturito all the time and we have no Spanish-speaking ancestry at all.
It’s true, however, that nothing is made of his ancestry in the story, and when you get that throwaway line towards the end revealing his actual ancestry, it only reinforces that it’s irrelevant. I enjoyed that bit because it’s kind of a gotcha. It shows that you jumped to a conclusion.
It’s true that if I hear “Lee,” I will assume East Asian. I’ve met some Lees of European ancestry, but I’ve met about a zillion Lees of Asian ancestry.
In the U.S., Kim is almost always a female name, so I would assume Kim Lee was a female. Pat Lee is more ambiguous.
