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Posted by xoobdev 6 hours ago

US boy names that became girl names and vice versa(namedaisy.com)
199 points | 215 commentspage 4
Danox 4 hours ago|
Most of the names that flip over seem to be names associated with the gentry class, many of the names seem to be neutral, soft very inoffensive names.
scottyah 3 hours ago||
It's super hard to keep track of, I have an app that's designed to help couples name their baby, and I always wanted to stay away from hard-defined gender stuff, but people still want boy/girl categories. So many are both, but to varying degrees. I ended up using a boy/girl/unisex selector, and had Jev tag all the names. It's especially when dealing with other countries, languages, and customs. At the end of the day, it's mostly easier for the user to just swipe left on a name rather than try to pre-eliminate it from their pool.
asimovfan 4 hours ago||
Stevie is a girl's name now?
petcat 4 hours ago||
Such a thing will often happen as the result of a celebrity having the name. For instance, famed Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks, whose real name was Stephanie.
saghm 4 hours ago|||
Years ago, one of the broadcasters for a Red Sox game was doing some ad read about some event Stevie Nicks was going to be at, but they read her name as "Steve Nicks" instead. Someone else in the booth corrected them, and they responded "I know him well, and I call him Steve". A fan apparently sent them a giant poster of Stevie Nicks, and the others put it up in the booth and teased him about it relentlessly during the next game.
TFNA 4 hours ago||||
The past tense "was" had me at least looking for an obituary. She is still very much alive
petcat 4 hours ago||
I was referring to the Stephanie part in the past tense. I doubt she's gone by that name since she was a child.

But yes, Stevie is very much still alive.

dfxm12 4 hours ago|||
Interestingly enough, Lindsey, like Lindsey Buckingham, the guitarist of Fleetwood Mac, became a more popular girl's name during Fleetwood Mac's heyday.
komodo99 2 hours ago||
Anecdata, but as a USian, it's always been an E/A spelling variation, E male variant, A female variant... YMMV
dfxm12 1 hour ago||
I'm just going by the article, which has data for both names. If you think it is wrong, take it up with them :)
deathanatos 4 hours ago|||
With the shift happening right after the 1976–1980 square, I'd assume people named their daughter after Stevie Nicks.
jeremyjh 4 hours ago|||
In the US, boys would abbreviate Stephen or Steven to Steve. Stevie only for a young boy.

I’m not sure what they are measuring here though - if it’s only birth certificates then I’m sure Stevie is dominated by girls for a long time.

stevekemp 3 hours ago||
As somebody born with the name Steven I'm curious about the relative popularity of "Steven" vs. "Stephen".

I feel like when I was a child more people were present with a PH, but nowadas virtually nobody. Most of the Stephens I know are "old", and I think "Steve" won.

But no doubt it varies on country, and who you know.

(I legally changed my name from Steven to Steve, a couple of years ago, because it was the only name I'd ever used and it got too tiresome dealing with my official passport, and ID saying one name when I signed/wrote another name on all my official paperwork. To the extent that employers would book flights in one name but my passport was in the other name, cue much hilarity at boarding time..)

jeremyjh 3 hours ago||
My brother was born in 1984 is Stephen. We have only ever called him by that name, Steve never stuck. At the time I thought Steven was the more common spelling already; but we were catholic and he was named for St. Stephen.
Fnoord 4 hours ago|||
I mean, this is US-centric data, but it is probably a shortening of 'Stephanie' or 'Stefanie' [1], the female variant of 'Stephan' or 'Stefan'. It stems from Greek, apparently: Stephanos. Its variant are used entirely throughout Europe, from Portugal to Russia.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie

jasonlotito 4 hours ago|||
Now? Let me introduce you to Stevie Nicks.
morninglight 4 hours ago||
Don't be silly.

Moon Unit is a girls name.

Stevie is a nickname for the sweetener Stevia.

neutronicus 4 hours ago||
I'm gonna credit George RR Martin with flipping Arya in the mid '90s
trelane 3 hours ago|
Ah, back when he still wrote.

Not that I'm bitter or anything

ape4 4 hours ago||
Good luck to the Perl function Text::GenderFromName()

Maybe it needs the birthday

andix 4 hours ago||
I guess it's eternally stuck in the 90s. I didn't see Perl in a long time now. 10-15 years ago it was still everywhere.

edit: No, it's stuck in the 80s: "The data comes from a 5% sampling of Social Security card applications with dates of birth from January 1980 through December 1989"

https://metacpan.org/pod/Text::GenderFromName#REGARDING-THE-...

normie3000 3 hours ago||
At what age are social security numbers issued? Folks born in 1989 weren't adults until the 2000s
OptionOfT 2 hours ago||
https://www.ssa.gov/faqs/en/questions/KA-01969.html

> It is a good idea to apply for your child's Social Security number and birth certificate at birth. If you apply at the hospital, the state agency that issues birth certificates will share your child's information with us. Then, we will mail the Social Security card to you. If you wait to apply, there may be delays while we verify your child's birth certificate.

boscillator 3 hours ago|||
Why did anyone even try and make this? It's fascinating what incomputable functions people try to shoe-horn into being computable.
rconti 4 hours ago|||
I thought you must be joking. You were not!
Terr_ 3 hours ago|||
I'm sure there are a few competing "Falsehoods programmers believe about names" out there by now.
astura 2 hours ago||
Missing: Shannon and Ryan.
moralestapia 4 hours ago||
Surprised to not see "Jordan" in there, it's the first one that came to my mind.
9991 4 hours ago||
> Failed to verify your browser > > Vercel Security Checkpoint | iad1::1793644520-hvXR6jD3A6jJoFcEhxLm7uNyDy9O2Ibl

Super informative article.

ranger_danger 4 hours ago||
What about Aaron -> Erin ?
TRiG_Ireland 3 hours ago||
To my Irish ear, these are two completely different names, not even slightly similar. (They're also etymologically unrelated.) It blew my mind when discussions on r/namenerds revealed that many Americans consider these names similar or even identical.
spogbiper 3 hours ago||
For most of my (male) life, people misspelled my name Aaron as Erin fairly regularly. I think that has contributed to the confusion. I also used to get Arron, Airon, and other variants. The "A-A-Ron" skit has made a noticeable difference in recent years.
libraryofbabel 4 hours ago||
Aaron is Hebrew and Erin is Irish. They just happen to sound the same.
TRiG_Ireland 3 hours ago|||
They don't even sound the same, except in some (not all) American accents. They don't sound even remotely similar to me.
drnick1 3 hours ago|||
I thought they did not, but after actually vocalizing them I would say they are basically indistinguishable in real (fast) speech.
YeGoblynQueenne 2 hours ago||
Once more I find myself wondering whether English really needs different vowels, if they can all be substituted for each other.
ranger_danger 3 hours ago|||
Interesting, they sound exactly the same to me, and I cannot even think of how they might sound different to someone else. Care to explain?
spc476 34 minutes ago||
Exaggerated, Aaron sounds like "air-ron" and Erin like "ear-ron". It's similar to how some in the US pronounce "pin" and "pen" the same.
Atreiden 3 hours ago|||
Not when pronounced correctly as A-Aron
jasonlotito 4 hours ago|
Sort of reminds me of the color swap of Pink and Blue for Men and Women.
xdennis 3 hours ago|
You're the victim of misinformation.

In the past there were no hard associations between sexes and gender and it was possible to find boys wearing some pink clothing, but it was never the case that people associated pink with boys and blue with girls.

There are some limited examples that contribute to the misunderstanding. For example blue is often associated with the Virgin Mary and red (not pink) was considered a manly color often worn by warriors (e.g. the British, the Romans, etc).

---

This is essentially the way reporting works. If you write an article showing that in the past it wouldn't have been bizarre for boys to wear pink you don't get much traction. But if you write how pink was actually worn by boys and it was considered shocking for girls to wear it, then people find that very surprising and you get a lot of views (truth be damned).

ternaryoperator 3 hours ago||
It’s easy to confirm that what you’re saying is not so. Ask AI and you'll get specific citations of pink being recommended for boys in the early 20th century: “in the early 1900s, publication guides and trade journals—such as the June 1918 issue of Earnshaw's Infants' Department—recommended pink for boys and blue for girls.”
kleiba2 1 hour ago||
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/unraveling-the-colorf...
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