Back in high school there was a boy named Schuyler S****. The first name was pronounced Sky-ler. I believe it is Dutch in origin.
Shift to the present and I frequently see the name Skyler or Skylar and it is a girl’s name. Maybe I led a sheltered youth but I’d never heard that name as a female name.
Anyone know how this developed? Did some popular soap-opera have a character with this name? That usually causes a storm of babies getting that same name.
Same thing with Morgan. I knew a few Morgans in grade school. All boys. There was even Morgan O’Rourke on F-Troop (the TV show). Now all the Morgans are girls. I know there was a Morgaine and a Morgana; fine those even sounds feminine (if that makes sense); so why co-opt the masculine form?
A recent article on Slate (www.slate.com/id/2116505/) made the interesting observation that names tend to travel downward on the socioeconomic ladder. A novel name is adopted by wealthy people, and eventually it’s adopted by the less wealthy in emulation, until the rich people don’t want it anymore because it sounds “low class.” Twenty-five years ago, Amber and Heather were “rich” names, and now they have an air of commonality to many people.
So I’m going to guess that the popularity of girls’ names like Skyler and Taylor is because many decades ago, it was common among bluebloods to give their daughters family last names as first names. In other words, Skyler was a wealthy surname, than it became a wealthy girls’ first name, and now it’s a first name for girls of all classes. In my estimation.
I had many reasons for naming my daughter Morgan, but one of the significant ones was that it did not sound feminine. I liked the idea that she had a name that didn’t shout out her gender first thing. I felt it would go some ways towards leveling the playing field when she grew up.
Is today, yes. When I was growing up, it was a surname, used very rarely as a boy’s name.
Schuyler was a common Dutch surname among New Amsterdam’s colonists, meaning “from the sheltered place,” and cognate with German “Schuler” meaning “scholar,” which is reported as an alternate derivation for the Dutch name as well.
Schuyler began to be a given name for boys who had Schuyler ancestry, in that odd old-American-upper-class custom of giving female-line surnames to male offspring.
Like many another boy’s name, it then became the “in” thing to give that name to a girl baby. The “Skyler” spelling is that affectation of coming up with a variant spelling, like “Katelynn” for “Caitlin” (which is actually pronounced more like Kathleen).
Rank of “Morgan” as a girl’s name in the U.S.
2004: 31
2000: 25
1995: 23
1990: 58
1985-1986: Morgan Fairchild is on nigthtime drama Falcon Crest.
1985: 127
1980: 243
1973-1977: Morgan Fairchild is on daytime drama Search for Tomorrow.
1975 and earlier: Not in top 1,000 names
Rank of “Morgan” as a boy’s name in the U.S.
2004: 312
2000: 332
1995: 236
1990: 277
1985: 300
1980: 291
1975: 276
1971: Morgan Freeman plays Easy Reader on The Electric Company.
1970: 446
1965: 535
1960: 498
1955: 516
trivtriv was suggesting that it did not, that it originally shifted from a surname to a girl’s name. It may not be a factual response, but I don’t think you can call him for not answering the question when he (or she?) points out a hidden assumption in the question that may keep it from having a literal answer.
Rank of Skylar/Skyler as a girl’s name in the U.S.
2004: 155 / 310
2000: 135 / 250
1995: 386 / 540
1990: 563 / 738
1989 and earlier: Not among top 1,000 names.
Rank of Skylar/Skyler/Schuyler as a boy’s name in the U.S.
2004: 471 / 236 / na
2000: 356 / 229 / na
1995: 408 / 223 / na
1990: 465 / 301 /na
1985: 668 / 431 / 863
1980 and earlier: Not among top 1,000 names.
But it also looks like it’s mighty popular with both boys and girls these days – plug it into that site’s NameVoyager and see the trend in action. (The site doesn’t just mention it’s overall popularity – it includes how many babies per million get that name.)