medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
There is a great blog on baby name trends called the Baby Name Wizard:
http://thebabynamewizard.ivillage.com/parenting/
The blog features a fascinating application called the Name Voyager which
gives a great visual of trends in naming in the US using census data and
such. I don't think it takes into account the UK, Canada or other
English-speaking countries.
Dan
Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski
Assistant Professor of Church History
Church Divinity School of the Pacific
2451 Ridge Road
Berkeley, California 94709-1217
-----Original Message-----
From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious
culture [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Chris Laning
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 12:58 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [M-R] Julian of Norwich [TAN]
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
dkline wrote:
>It is quite fashionable these days in the US to give girls first names that
>commonly used to be boys names, like Sidney/Sydney (on one end of the
scale)
>to Forest (on the other). I've had Logans, Alexs, Camerons, Hunters, Evans,
>Jacksons, Seans, Adrians, Jadens, Johnnies/Johnnys, and many others, of
both
>genders.
That's a trend that's been going on for quite a long time. And quite a few
of these names were originally surnames and then became male given names
before migrating to the female side. Madison, Michael, Mackenzie, Jordan,
Taylor, Bailey, and London can be added to the list of modern examples.
Madison is among the most popular girls' names at the moment -- ironically,
since like a few others you can still discern the "-son" ending. In living
memory, Ashley, Stacy, Tracy, Dana, Kelly, Leslie, and Marion have also
changed gender. So has Robin, but only in the US I think. (I think I
remember hearing it's still a male name in the UK.)
Sadly (?!) it seldom goes the other way. As one onomasticist of my
acquaintance says, "Once a name acquires 'girl cooties', it stops being used
as a male name rather quickly." About the only exception I can think of at
the moment is Douglass (which was female in the 16th century).
I actually recommend said onomasticist's book _Baby Names for Dummies_ by
"Margaret Rose" (a pen name) as an interesting source of information on name
trends. (Behind the pen name is Dr. Heather Rose Jones.)
____________________________________________________________
0 Chris Laning
| <[log in to unmask]>
+ Davis, California
http://paternoster-row.org - http://paternosters.blogspot.com
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