« In Perspective | Main | Good News / Bad News » Boys Become Girls28 Dec 2007 02:17 pm
The Baby Name Wizard NameVoyager is one of those things I start playing around with obsessively for a few hours and then completely forget for months. But Dana Goldstein's brought it back to my attention, using her own name to create this chart which illustrates the phenomenon of name sex changes where a name starts androgynous but then reaches a tipping point of girlishness and falls into disuse as a boy's name. Comments (27)
where a name starts androgynous but then reaches a tipping point of girlishness and falls into disuse as a boy's name. Stuff and Nonsense! Seems to me that Dana fell out of favor from the 80's to 2003 in a pretty gender equitable kind of way . . . Given that the girl portion of the graph is opaque, it's impossible to tell what precisely happened for boys after 2003, but clearly "girlishness" isn't the only or most important explanation for Dana's decline. The name declined for girls almost as much. 
sorry for the double post; if you're going to read one of them . . . i prefer the latter.
Southpaw, I think you're misreading the graph - the blue part shows all boys named it, and the pink all girls. There's nothing underneath the pink part. Dana was mostly a boy's name until the 30s. Then it gradually picked up steam as a girls name. The name began to become wildly popular as a girl's name in the 60s, but kept its similar, relative unpopularity, as a boy's name. It peaked as a girl's name in 1980. At that point it starts to decline, but whereas it seems to have settled at a relatively unpopular, but healthy, point for girls, it's virtually nonexistent for guys.
It's a good idea to pick your son's name from the Bible, since those seldom go girl. How many girls named Nimrod have you met? I rest my case.
Look at the graph for Jamie. Started out a girls name and then started being given to boys. I don't buy the theory. Most names are either growing in use for both sexes or dropping for both.
There are going to be a lot of Jacobs running around in the next few decades. Hopefully all of them with full glorious beards.
Look at the graph for Jamie. Started out a girls name and then started being given to boys. I don't buy the theory. Most names are either growing in use for both sexes or dropping for both.
John, You're right that I was misreading the graph. I am chagrinned. Despite my ruined credibility, however, I'm still not convinced. For one thing, if you graph the two genders alone, the shape of the graph is still pretty similar--suggesting to me that a non-gendered model of the names popularity decline is the most important explanation. For another, if you graph the name DAN (and only dan, you have to hit return) for boys only, you'll see that it too declines to zero (which is to say, out of the top 1000 names) around 2006. That suggests, again, that something else is going on with these boys names than an aversion to girlishness.
I'm with Southpaw. Dana's popularity as a boys' name was still higher in the 1970s than it was in the 1940s, when Dana's popularity as a girl's name took off. Then when Dana's popularity cratered in general, it cratered to zero for boys. The same thing happened with Kim: it was more popular as a boy's name than a girl's in the 1940s, but even after becoming primarily girls' property in the 1950s and 1960s, it was more popular as a boy's name in the 1960s than it had been in the 1940s. Then when Kim's popularity as a girl's name cratered, Kim's popularity as a boy's name went to zero. Similarly with Stacy, but I'll spare you the details; you can easily check them out yourselves.
DJ- you're reading the graph wrong. The thickness of the band, not whether it's on top, tells you the popularity. 'Jamie' seems to follow the same pattern as Stacy, Kim, and Dana, but it hasn't dropped out of the top 1000 boys' names yet.
And if you name your guitarists Kimberly and Robyn, you'll end up with the Soft Boys...
Dana Goldstein cited "Peyton" as a name that's made the switch from boys to girls in recent years. I'm wondering if Peyton Manning might inspire parents to start using it for boys once again.
Hey, what happened to Jennifer to cause it to become so popular? It went from #206 in the 40s (less than 1,000 girls per million with the name) to 98th in the 50s, 20th in the 60s, and #1 in the 70s! That's a rapid ascent, and my experience bore it out. Of the 20 girls in my Kindergarden class (in 1984), 7 were named Jennifer or a variation thereof, and this was a normal public school district in Michigan. Now its down to #51? Strange...
Check out Angel. The increase of girls being named Angel didn't affect boys being given that name. (Also, having a bit of trouble reading the graph, but it does seem like there were more girls than boys being named Angel in the 1980s)
There's a chapter in Freakonomics about names, according to it, Angel, given to a girl, is the name that most signify poorly educated white parents. Also, the parents that started to name their boys Micah, what were they looking for?
Check out Angel. The increase of girls being named Angel didn't affect boys being given that name. I would imagine that most of the boys getting that name are Hispanic.
And if you name your guitarists Kimberly and Robyn, you'll end up with the Soft Boys.. I'm insanely jealous that John I beat me to that comment. "James" seems to be cratering-in-slow-motion from a #1 in the 1940s (really?) to a pathetic #16 at present. I need to get to work on producing a Jim Jr.--gotta do my part to keep the percentage up.
Michigander: The female lead in the movie "Love Story" was named Jennifer, and this is generally regarded as the reason for the name's explosion in the 1970s. (The male lead character was named Oliver, but I suspect that the actor who played him, Ryan O'Neal, played a part in boosting the popularity of the name Ryan, although not to the same degree.)
The female lead in the movie "Love Story" was named Jennifer, and this is generally regarded as the reason for the name's explosion in the 1970s. (The male lead character was named Oliver, but I suspect that the actor who played him, Ryan O'Neal, played a part in boosting the popularity of the name Ryan, although not to the same degree.) Which brings up the question of why Erich Segal chose to use that name. The character would have been born in the 1940's, when Jennifer was an uncommon name.
When did people named Matt become vaguely androgynous?
Yes, it's striking that names tend to 'go girl', but rarely if ever 'go boy'. Marion, Leslie, Robin, Tyler, Shirley. Anna was a mid-7th century king of East Anglia. In picking names for our own children, my wife and I tried to find names which had unambiguous gender, consensus spelling, some sort of dignity. No 'Dakota' for us!
Also, the parents that started to name their boys Micah, what were they looking for? Not sure what your point is, but Micah is a dude's name from the Old Testament. I don't think it's really a crossover or even particularly epicene.
Evelyn, Lindsey, Merle, Courtney, Brooke all of these and many more started as boys' names. I had an uncle named Merle, which probably explains a lot about why he was universally called Bud by his friends and coworkers as well as his nieces and nephews. For that matter my grandfather was named Raymond Clarence which even in the 1910's sounded a little iffy, when he played varsity football for Purdue and forever after he was known as 'R.C.' Back in the day you could be pretty gender safe by using biblical names, not a lot of boys ever got named Sarah probably no girl ever got named Abraham or Ezekiel, but you can never be too sure, Michael got poached long ago and I think Steven is on the edge and longterm I would not be secure with David. On the other hand I don't think we have to worry much about a flurry of middle schools girls named Matthew and Ezra in the next couple of decades. (On second thought my ex-boss has an adorable little girl named 'Mattie', really nothing is gender proof at this point).
Otto seems to be safe for now.
"Francis" is interesting in this context. But isn't it always?
As an old guy, I recall the actor Dana Andrews being a masculine type. Dana Perino, not so much, although she can help me out of the plane any time.
Comments closed January 11, 2008. |
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Heads in the Sand
where a name starts androgynous but then reaches a tipping point of girlishness and falls into disuse as a boy's name.
Is that what this shows? Seems to me that Dana fell out of favor from the 80's to 2003 in a pretty gender equitable kind of way . . .
Given that the girl portion of the graph is opaque, it's impossible to tell what happened after 2003, but clearly "girlishness" isn't the only or most important explanation for Dana's decline, since it declined for girls too.
Posted by southpaw | December 28, 2007 2:44 PM