I don’t feel I am being sexist by wanting to name my son a traditional male name and my daughter a traditional female name. I like simple, common names for kids. If someone else wants to name their boy a typical girl name, great. None of my concern.
That’s not what is sexist. What is sexist is thinking that giving your little girl a traditionally male name is empowering, while giving your little boy a traditional female name is child abuse.
Both of which I still think are true. And it bugs me. 'Cause I really, really don’t want to be sexist. Heck, until this thread I didn’t think I was being sexist. But I also don’t want to get into child abuse for some vague sense of social equality.
Well, that’s why I brought time limit stuff up. Ashley is “traditionally” a male name when you go back to the root. So what counts and what doesn’t then? Do you really just mean “according to the modern day usage”, not “traditionally”?
Good point. I guess I mean modern day usage then. I wouldn’t name my son Ashley or Leslie now even though those used to be traditionally male names.
I agree it’s sexist to name a girl a “boy name” and think it’s empowering while doing the opposite is abuse.
This seems to have happened occasionally in the '20’s and 30’s. I’ve known of men with first names of Doris, Beverly, and Shirley that were 30-50-ish YO adults in the 1960’s
My youngest son (just turning 1) is named Julien, and I’m amazed how many people blink at the name as if I named him Elizabeth.
Tiffany is an interesting choice, as it was originally a boy’s/man’s name.
I grew up in the same era with those guys, some named Dana, Stacey, Tracy and Lynn. Over the years, I’ve also worked with men of my father’s generation named Dorris, Florence, Shirley and Fay. Last but not least, I once dated a man named Leslie Marion (according to his mom, it would have been the same for a girl).
If I were still in childbearing years, I wouldn’t mind giving a rather feminine middle name to a boy, just as I might give a typically masculine middle name to a girl. The first name, however, would likely be something that matched their bio sex.
Is being mistaken for a girl that awful?
How much of this rule is simple reaction to sexism, and how much of it is sexism?
My rules when picking name options for our baby (who turned out to be a boy):
- Not in the top 10, preferably not in the top 50
- Easy to spell and the most common spelling of that name, preferable the only standard one
- Gender obvious
- Not fucking stupid
Once or twice? No. On numerous occasions over the course of a lifetime? Yes, that could get old. There is just no good reason to choose to subject your kid to a lifetime of preventable awkwardness. This isn’t sexism, against girls, by the way. I wouldn’t name a girl James either. “So, your parents wanted a girl, huh?” “Did your parents just hate you?” “Should I call you sir or ma’am?/Is this some kind of “It’s Pat!” situation/are you transitioning?”
I’ve heard all kinds of negative, incorrect assumptions about names like mine. Even though I like it just fine and don’t think it’s negatively affected me, I’d still lean toward choosing something mainstream for my child, just to spare them any potential headaches.
I tried to edit this in, but I missed the window. I should have been more precise. I wasn’t thinking about a 1% majority, but more like a 75/25 split. And I guess time is a factor, but not in the way you seem to mean it. Jennifer could become a popular girl name tomorrow, but the name won’t fully shift until most of the original Jennifers die.
I am mistaken for a dude all the time because I’m androgynous looking. Yes, it can be annoying, but a person gets used to it eventually. It’s not a horrible experience unless a person is so sexist that they think something is wrong with being the other gender for a fleeting second. And if a person has a name that gives them a hard time, they can go by a nickname, middle name, or formally change their first name. Almost none of the people I work with go by their given names. I’m sure their parents don’t mind.
I don’t particularly like my name BECAUSE it is mainstream. It’s not common, but it’s as boring and not “me” as you can get. And even though it’s just four letters, people are always fucking it up. And yet I soldier on because I know that at any time, I am capable of going by a different name. I choose not to because it’s just a name, at the end of the day. It ain’t that big of a deal.
Seriously, when I meet someone named “John” or “Jane”, my first thought is usually “man, they must have boring-ass parents!” I’m pretty sure that John and Jane’s parents don’t give a flying fuck what someone like me thinks, though. Good for them for having some balls.
I don’t understand why someone else would be so afraid of other people’s prejudices that they would make up a rule like yours. I especially don’t understand being unabashed about it. :shrug:
Frankly, I don’t see a good reason to *create *annoyances for someone to eventually “get used to.” Or to choose a name knowing there’s a good chance the kid will hate it and end up deciding to go by something else. Life is full enough of minor and major annoyances, as it is, without people designing more of them for the heck of it. My kid would already have plenty of prejudice to deal with from day one. I’m not going to add to that unless I have a reason to. If you see that as being afraid, so be it.
A friend of a friend named her son “Willow” (after the Val Kilmer movie).
I know eleventy-billion Mikes and Johns. And Jennifers and Jessicas. I’m guessing some of these folks really wish their parents hadn’t been so concerned about fitting in.
I would never name a kid something that I personally despised or that I felt they wouldn’t like either. But if I had a name that I really loved (“Evelyn” is one), it wouldn’t occur to me base my decision on what some silly child on the playground might think.
I’m all for taking the path of least resistance, but I’m not a fan of kowtowing of prejudice or other people’s stupid opinions either. I don’t think giving a kid a unique, gender-bendery name is making a political statement if it comes from a genuine preference, especially if the kid is given some license in how they identify themselves later on.
It’s not necessarily about other people’s prejudices , or even about being mistaken for the other gender. There are just certain sorts of names that will cause annoyances to the person bearing them. It’s not just names associated with the opposite gender. Sometimes the annoyance is worth it and sometimes it’s not. And one of the annoyances actually is having a “nickname” for a name. I know people whose actual names on their birth certificates/drivers license/everything is something like “Charlie” or “Danny” or “Tommy” and a constant problem for them is that people think those are their nicknames and call/refer to them as “Charles” or “Daniel” or “Thomas” in situations where nicknames aren’t appropriate.They get paychecks made out to the wrong name, business cards are ordered incorrectly,letters/memos are addressed incorrectly.Other people aren’t prejudiced and they’re not being mistaken for the other gender, but it’s annoying. Even though I knew I would call my children by diminutives, I still gave them the formal, full name because I didn’t want them to have the same problems as my husband. I wouldn’t have named my daughter something like “Andrea” that has three different pronunciations or my son something like “Brandon” that gets easily confused with “Brendan” or either one of them a name with three or four different spellings like mine. And none of those have anything to do with prejudices - just annoyance.
My given name is a non-European name that is often mistaken for the wrong gender. It hasn’t hurt me one bit. As a child, I used a nickname. As an adult, I love my given name, and I wouldn’t have any other.
Worrying about what kind of teasing children will be subject to on the playground is a sucker’s game. Bullies don’t pick their targets just based on their names. They pick them and then figure out how to make fun of their names. Every single name one can think of can be turned into an insult by a child, and has been.
FYI, the song “A Boy Named Sue” was written by artist/poet/musician Shel Silverstein, and based on the life of author, broadcaster, and raconteur Jean Shepherd, best known for writing the stories on which the movie, A Christmas Story, was based.
Shepherd (a man) includes a rather subtle gag about the situation in “A Christmas Story,” with the aunt who sends Shepherd’s boy alter ego a bunny suit, in the belief that he is a girl. The story is inexplicable because the character’s name is Ralphie, but it actually happened to the real Shepherd.
Other little know facts about Shepherd: he is the basis for the scene in which Howard Beale’s character in Paddy Chayefsky’s Network tells everyone listening to get up, go to their windows, and shout “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” Shepherd did almost exactly that in some of his radio shows in New York City in the late 1950s, early 1960s.
He was also the basis for the main character in A Thousand Clowns.
I am personally familiar with the “nickname as a name” thing because my father gave me such a name. And yeah, it’s annoying since people will call me the formal version of my name, thinking that’s my real name. I already don’t care for my name that much, but I really HATE the “grown up” version of it.
But few of us can avoid having our names fucked up against our wishes. I have a coworker named David. For years, I called him Dave because that’s what everyone calls him, and he just seems like a “Dave” kind of guy. Just recently, he casually mentioned that he hates when we call him that. I felt bad because of the aforementioned experience of my own name.
And then there’s Jonathan. He doesn’t ever introduce himself as or sign his emails with “Jon”. But that’s what everyone calls him.
Seems to me you’d be better off worrying about finding a name that you like and that you think their kid might like, rather than worrying about a name that doesn’t have annoying qualities. Someone is going to be annoyed, regardless.