upvote

points

by petemc_3 hours ago |
comments
upvoteby ethagnawl2 hours ago|
next
[-]
Did he have a brother named Sue? If so, I might know the reason ...

> And he said, "Son, this world is rough

> And if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough

> And I knew I wouldn't be there to help ya along.

> So I give ya that name and I said goodbye

> I knew you'd have to get tough or die

> And it's the name that helped to make you strong."

Johnny Cash - A Boy Named Sue

reply
upvoteby snarf212 hours ago|
prev|
next
[-]
As someone with an pretty unusual name, I think kids will always find a reason to make fun of you and it isn't always just the name.

True Story: My mom was a 2nd grade teacher for 30 years and in the 70s had a student with very 'hippie" style parents. They named their son Log Cabin. You can imagine how that went over in elementary school.

reply
upvoteby graemep1 hours ago|
prev|
next
[-]
Hilary is a boys name that became a girls name. It is also a surname (although the latter usually has a double L).
reply
upvoteby LorenPechtel2 hours ago|
prev|
next
[-]
I suspect this is a big driver of the switch. Parents that do not want to give their boys a name that will cause issues later on.

Back in school it wasn't a problem, people knew "Loren" was male, "Lauren" was female. Now, an awful lot of people don't. It's an uncommon enough name that even if you were around back when that's how it worked you very well might not have known it.

As an adult I routinely get misgendered, but it's a so-what to me.

reply
upvoteby YeGoblynQueenne1 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
As a non-native English speaker I've learned never to gender English speakers from their names. I mean in emails and so on, when I haven't had a chance to meet them. No "Ask Ashley if she would like to join us...". "Would Ashley like to join us?" is the safe option.
reply
upvoteby triceratops2 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
Here's my favorite "Lauren"*: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Bush

*solely because her legal, married name is Lauren Bush Lauren. She actually changed it, which is gold (and honestly very sweet).

reply
upvoteby macintux2 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
> As an adult I routinely get misgendered, but it's a so-what to me.

You're fortunate that the spelling is distinct. The story of Kim O'Grady is depressing.

https://www.thecut.com/2013/07/maybe-you-should-add-mister-t...

reply
upvoteby lrivers2 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
Loren adjacent. In high school my girlfriend was Lauren and mine is Lorin. Friends over pronounced our names to differentiate. It doesn’t bother me to get misgendered, either. It never lasts past hearing my voice or seeing me, though.
reply
upvoteby ReptileMan2 hours ago|
prev|
next
[-]
Because it's there...
reply
upvoteby BeetleB2 hours ago|
prev|
next
[-]
Weird comment, given that it was, not long ago, a common name for a male.

I'd wager if it weren't for Clinton, most people would still associate it with men.

reply
upvoteby zahlman2 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
How "not long ago" are you thinking of? Clinton was first a major figure in the 90s (and we also had https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fresh_Prince_of_Bel-Air ). And Clinton herself is from the baby boom generation; what male Hil(l)arys from that cohort do you have in mind?
reply
upvoteby zamadatix2 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
Looks like it flipped in ~the 40s, by the ~60s had become rarer as a male name, and was pretty much a flop as a male name after the ~80s. So Clinton was born just when it started to take off for females (and in general - it was never as common as a male name) and there should have been in the same ballpark as as many male "Hilary"s of the same age.

https://namedaisy.com/us/name/Hilary

reply
upvoteby ks20481 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
Hilary Putnam (famous male philosopher) was born in 1926. I imagine soon after this generation is flipped.
reply
upvoteby andix2 hours ago|
prev|
[-]
It's kind of surprising that this is even allowed. A lot of countries require at least the first given name to match the gender. Some names might be deemed suitable for both genders.
reply
upvoteby Vrondi2 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
In the USA, you can name your kid what you want. This avoids one ethnic group requiring everyone to have a name from their tradition.
reply
upvoteby stevekemp1 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
Finland has some naming rules, but they don't necessarily apply to everyone in the country because they're rules for naming people born here, rather than those who later moved here.

There is a public index of forenames and surnames which I learned about when I was with my pregnant wife, and back then I was obsessively searching for my/our surname to see it increase by one when our newborn was registered and became "official".

Apparently within the whole of Finland there 22 men with the same surname as me, and 25 women. 21 of these people are in Finland and 26 are abroad but known.

Interestingly if I go to the forename search and look for people named "Steve" there are < 5 women with that name (i.e. non-zero, but the number masked for privacy reasons):

https://nimipalvelu.dvv.fi/en/forename-search?name=Steve

I'm curious about the origin there, though of course I've seen Steve -> Steffan -> Stephany, and similar translations in the past.

reply
upvoteby macintux2 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
I'm not sure "a lot" is accurate, although certainly more than I expected.

Looks like Europe has several countries with legal requirements, although the trend there is moving the other direction, plus Chile.

reply
upvoteby zahlman2 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
…Why would it be surprising for the USA not to have such a requirement?
reply
upvoteby cubefox2 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
The US has unusually common unisex naming. Most other countries don't.
reply
upvoteby triceratops2 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
We associate names ending with a vowel sound with the female gender. Other than that there's nothing gendered about "Hilary" as a first name.
reply
upvoteby Jtsummers2 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_(name) - It's not an exclusively female name. But in the US, you can give a kid pretty much any name you want (see the names Musk gives his kids these days).
reply