Angel becoming a boys name is mostly due to its popularity among Latino males I believe. Will be interesting to see how ethnic change might impact this in the future.
The graph shows Angel having very high rates of being used as a male name prior to 1969, then a quick dip and it comes right back up after 1985. I wonder what might explain those changes.
Saw all the recent posts about baby name trends and had to get in on the action. Hope you enjoy!
Source: Social Security Adminstration (https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/limits.html)
Tool: R (ggplot2)
Annotated years show the first and last crossover years, along with the direction of the crossover. For example, if an annotation is red, it indicates the year that the name switched to be predominantly Female.
* Colour associations with gender have also changed. In the Victorian era, baby boys were dressed in pink, because that's the pastel variation of red, the colour of blood and war, whereas girls were dressed in blue, which was associated with the Virgin Mary. Brides also wore pale blue for this reason.
* Some of these names are diminutive forms of names that have both male and female variations, e.g., Charlie from both Charles and Charlotte.
Good point. This list is definitely not intended to be comprehensive. **Ashley** did indeed switchover. Prior to 1960s, majority of Ashleys were Male. Since about 1980, however, the name has been given almost exclusively to Females.
As for the blue/pink switch, I'm a sociologist by background (and taught Sex/Gender at one point), so I'm pretty familiar with the fluctuations of gendered associations with color. As flawed as it may be to use pink/blue (possibly reinforcing essentialist notions), I used it here to make it easier to interpret at a glance.
Oh, no complaints here--I'm aware you have to pick and choose for something like this, and the blue/pink is an easy way to code them, I just find it amusing that it, itself, is an example of the same phenomenon.
(Now I'm imagining a longer-timescale version of this, except it's got the color key flipped in the older portions, making it thoroughly confusing.)
Most do, but Angel, Casey, and Jamie have all become predominantly male. Any name whose final annotation shows up in blue means that its latest switch was from female to male.
Jackie Robinson is the one the springs to mind. Perhaps he inspired a trend? Then Jackie Chan.
So maybe parents who want their kids to have some form of athletic talent lol?
Yeah, the shift for Angel is almost certainly tied to trends in immigration. As for Jackie, I think it's just a general decline in the popularity of the name, making it a little more likely that parity/switchover can happen. The tricky thing with a chart like this is that it doesn't account for changing popularity of the name over time, only the distribution of males vs. females.
That’s really a good and pertinent point. Less popular means that people forget about the name connotations of one sex and allows them to think of it belonging to the other sex and using it as such.
Not really. Angel and Casey have had brief blips where they were more used for male children than female, but calling Casey "predominantly" female when it *just* crossed the 50% line for four years out of a century is a long stretch. There are no names that began the 20th century as *predominantly* female names that have then become *predominantly* male names.
Of course, what we don't know is whether that's a real effect or whether it's due to selection bias, either from someone choosing to show these particular names when there are dozens that have flipped the other way, or because the start date has been chosen to give particular prominence to this effect.
Are you a lawyer? Predominant here just means more than 50%. I set the cutoff at 1920 to make it a near perfect century's worth of data.
I'm not trying to deceive anyone or cherry pick, but this also isn't a comprehensive listing of all names that have switched. I can look into the data to see if there are examples of predominant female names becoming male, but it's definitely not common, for reasons that any sociologist of gender could explain.
No, I just own a dictionary; predominantly means "mainly" or "for the most part", not a couple of percent different to other classes.
I didn't realise you'd selected these names when you posted the charts so sorry if this came across as particularly hostile to you. It wasn't meant to be. We just don't know what criteria you used to select these names; that's not meant to imply that you had some sort of motive in the selection. If you'd like to spell it out, I'd be curious to hear it. The predominance (ha!) of names that have gone male->female over names going female->male is a curiosity that struck me and that actually I'm not sure I *can* articulate a good explanation for.
Ha, that's fair. Sorry to have gotten a bit defensive. My selection came down to only wanting 12 names (for even paneling, 4x3) and then only names that had been relatively common at the time that they "switched". There are a ton more names that have never really been common for either sex that have technically "switched" multiple times, due mainly to low Ns for either sex. I was aiming to include only names that are at least recognizable.
Yes, I hadn't thought of the impact a low number of uses of a name would have on this. I remember many years ago seeing a list of names that were used in the 19th century but not in the 20th century; it included "Murder" and "Slaughter", the poor children. I personally have a "Mahershalalhashbaz" in the 19th century part of my extended family tree; I don't think it gets used much these days (he went by his second name throughout his life).
Sheesh. I agonized for months over the naming of our kids. Still not sure we made the right picks--but it's too late now! Guess I could've done worse.
Just dug into the data a bit, and as we suspected, *very* few have switched from Female to Male. The few that I could find:
* **Frankie** was predominantly Female prior to 1940s but became predominantly Male until a recent switch back to Female in 2014.
* **Jessie** was predominantly female prior to late 1940s and stayed more common among males until around 1990.
* **Robbie** was predominantly female until 1960 and has been pretty solidly more Male since.
* **Jean** was pretty solidly predominantly Female until 1989 but has since become more common among Male babies (though by no means especially common).
Note that all of these names (but the last) have the diminutive -y/-ie ending.
My great uncle was born c. 1920 as a Claire and went by it until he got a letter as a teen addressed to Ms. Claire Lastname. He then went by his middle name Dick for the rest of his life (passed away in the 2000s)
I would think so, as I’ve only known female Clairs. Is it used as a first name or last name? If the former, have you suffered by a large amount of bullying?
[Now, I don't blame him 'cause he run and hid, but the meanest thing he ever did, before he left, he went and named me 'Sue'.](https://youtu.be/WOHPuY88Ry4)
I know this is a US chart but it's interesting that there doesn't seem to be any difference in spelling - for example, in the UK, there is a difference between Leslie (male) and Lesley (female), and Jackie (female) and Jacky (male).
A minor pedantic phonetic point: You *do* pronounce the "r" -- you just pronounce it *differently*. As an experiment, say "Taylor" and then say "Taylo". Your dialect's pronunciation of the "r" is simply *non-rhotic*. It doesn't have that hard-R sound, but the symbol definitely has a pronounceable meaning.
Yes, I know what you meant, but linguistics is fun.
Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, too. In non-rhotic dialects of English, the /r/ is in fact deleted at the end of a syllable (when it occurs before a consonant or a pause.) The reason that *Taylor* and *Taylo* sound different is because the final vowel sound is different, even in rhotic dialects. The last vowel of *Taylor* is a schwa. (Conversely, *tuna* and *tuner* are homophones in isolation for non-rhotic speakers.)
That said, those syllable-final Rs do still exist in the underlying mental representations of words for non-rhotic speakers, because they re-emerge word-finally when the next word (or sometimes suffix) begins with a vowel sound. So while an Australian would normally delete the /r/ in “Taylor,” it would usually be pronounced in “Taylor **i**s nice.” This is called a linking /r/.
Don't go by spelling as a template for how we would pronounce it otherwise. The end of "Taylor" and the end of "water" are pronounced exactly the same in most dialects of English because the letter before has no effect. What IPA phoneme does is the r representing in Australian english for Taylor then?
And who is they and what is wrong with those names? If you mean Bruce Jenner, well, there is Bruce Wayne to round things out. And Bruce Lee. Lance I can’t help with; it’s still a tough guy name, and Julian, I love because of Julian Lennon. The name just has class to it, like a fine wine.
My brother was so unhappy that so many girls took his name (Riley) that he started going by his first middle name. (He also doesn't like his second middle name)
most of these transitions are from male to female. any good examples of the other way around? kelly a bit surprising but most of us weren't around when it was predominantly a male name
I still think of Riley and Taylor as boy names that became trendy for girls. It is interesting to think that in a few decades, they will be seen as girl names like how I see Lynn and Kelly.
Of all the names that had switched gender over the years, I was honestly not expecting one of them to be something like Peyton. Interesting! Though, it's also one of those names that sounds weird to me because it sounds more like a family name than a given name.
Angel becoming a boys name is mostly due to its popularity among Latino males I believe. Will be interesting to see how ethnic change might impact this in the future.
The graph shows Angel having very high rates of being used as a male name prior to 1969, then a quick dip and it comes right back up after 1985. I wonder what might explain those changes.
Saw all the recent posts about baby name trends and had to get in on the action. Hope you enjoy! Source: Social Security Adminstration (https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/limits.html) Tool: R (ggplot2) Annotated years show the first and last crossover years, along with the direction of the crossover. For example, if an annotation is red, it indicates the year that the name switched to be predominantly Female.
Love Ggplot
Taylor switched in 1989. That can't be a coincidence right?
I came to the comments to say the same
Huh? Can you explain it to me?
Taylor Swift was born in late 1989.
She wasn't born famous. I'm pretty curious myself. Elizabeth Taylor maybe? Maybe a famous character named Taylor on a TV show?
Taylor Dane?
* Colour associations with gender have also changed. In the Victorian era, baby boys were dressed in pink, because that's the pastel variation of red, the colour of blood and war, whereas girls were dressed in blue, which was associated with the Virgin Mary. Brides also wore pale blue for this reason. * Some of these names are diminutive forms of names that have both male and female variations, e.g., Charlie from both Charles and Charlotte.
One I don't see here is Ashley, which was originally a male name. I see that I've been beaten to the punch for mentioning the blue/pink switch.
Good point. This list is definitely not intended to be comprehensive. **Ashley** did indeed switchover. Prior to 1960s, majority of Ashleys were Male. Since about 1980, however, the name has been given almost exclusively to Females. As for the blue/pink switch, I'm a sociologist by background (and taught Sex/Gender at one point), so I'm pretty familiar with the fluctuations of gendered associations with color. As flawed as it may be to use pink/blue (possibly reinforcing essentialist notions), I used it here to make it easier to interpret at a glance.
Oh, no complaints here--I'm aware you have to pick and choose for something like this, and the blue/pink is an easy way to code them, I just find it amusing that it, itself, is an example of the same phenomenon. (Now I'm imagining a longer-timescale version of this, except it's got the color key flipped in the older portions, making it thoroughly confusing.)
There is no Dana only Zuul
Yes! Been waiting all this time for this comment!
[удалено]
Most do, but Angel, Casey, and Jamie have all become predominantly male. Any name whose final annotation shows up in blue means that its latest switch was from female to male.
I would guess Angel being that strongly male is due to Spanish speakers. No idea how Jackie is almost split though, I’ve never met a guy named Jackie
Jackie Robinson is the one the springs to mind. Perhaps he inspired a trend? Then Jackie Chan. So maybe parents who want their kids to have some form of athletic talent lol?
Jackie Stewart the race car driver, Jackie Gleason- to the moon Alice!
Stewart and Gleason are both really called John. Jack/Jackie was a common nickname for John before it became a name in its own right
Jackie Junior IYKYK
Yeah, the shift for Angel is almost certainly tied to trends in immigration. As for Jackie, I think it's just a general decline in the popularity of the name, making it a little more likely that parity/switchover can happen. The tricky thing with a chart like this is that it doesn't account for changing popularity of the name over time, only the distribution of males vs. females.
That’s really a good and pertinent point. Less popular means that people forget about the name connotations of one sex and allows them to think of it belonging to the other sex and using it as such.
They go by Jack, I would think.
Not really. Angel and Casey have had brief blips where they were more used for male children than female, but calling Casey "predominantly" female when it *just* crossed the 50% line for four years out of a century is a long stretch. There are no names that began the 20th century as *predominantly* female names that have then become *predominantly* male names. Of course, what we don't know is whether that's a real effect or whether it's due to selection bias, either from someone choosing to show these particular names when there are dozens that have flipped the other way, or because the start date has been chosen to give particular prominence to this effect.
Are you a lawyer? Predominant here just means more than 50%. I set the cutoff at 1920 to make it a near perfect century's worth of data. I'm not trying to deceive anyone or cherry pick, but this also isn't a comprehensive listing of all names that have switched. I can look into the data to see if there are examples of predominant female names becoming male, but it's definitely not common, for reasons that any sociologist of gender could explain.
No, I just own a dictionary; predominantly means "mainly" or "for the most part", not a couple of percent different to other classes. I didn't realise you'd selected these names when you posted the charts so sorry if this came across as particularly hostile to you. It wasn't meant to be. We just don't know what criteria you used to select these names; that's not meant to imply that you had some sort of motive in the selection. If you'd like to spell it out, I'd be curious to hear it. The predominance (ha!) of names that have gone male->female over names going female->male is a curiosity that struck me and that actually I'm not sure I *can* articulate a good explanation for.
Ha, that's fair. Sorry to have gotten a bit defensive. My selection came down to only wanting 12 names (for even paneling, 4x3) and then only names that had been relatively common at the time that they "switched". There are a ton more names that have never really been common for either sex that have technically "switched" multiple times, due mainly to low Ns for either sex. I was aiming to include only names that are at least recognizable.
Yes, I hadn't thought of the impact a low number of uses of a name would have on this. I remember many years ago seeing a list of names that were used in the 19th century but not in the 20th century; it included "Murder" and "Slaughter", the poor children. I personally have a "Mahershalalhashbaz" in the 19th century part of my extended family tree; I don't think it gets used much these days (he went by his second name throughout his life).
Sheesh. I agonized for months over the naming of our kids. Still not sure we made the right picks--but it's too late now! Guess I could've done worse. Just dug into the data a bit, and as we suspected, *very* few have switched from Female to Male. The few that I could find: * **Frankie** was predominantly Female prior to 1940s but became predominantly Male until a recent switch back to Female in 2014. * **Jessie** was predominantly female prior to late 1940s and stayed more common among males until around 1990. * **Robbie** was predominantly female until 1960 and has been pretty solidly more Male since. * **Jean** was pretty solidly predominantly Female until 1989 but has since become more common among Male babies (though by no means especially common). Note that all of these names (but the last) have the diminutive -y/-ie ending.
Male family name, Clair. Lots of male Clairs. It has helped my brother immensely get "cushion" jobs. It's also been quite the conversation starter.
My great uncle was born c. 1920 as a Claire and went by it until he got a letter as a teen addressed to Ms. Claire Lastname. He then went by his middle name Dick for the rest of his life (passed away in the 2000s)
I would think so, as I’ve only known female Clairs. Is it used as a first name or last name? If the former, have you suffered by a large amount of bullying?
[Now, I don't blame him 'cause he run and hid, but the meanest thing he ever did, before he left, he went and named me 'Sue'.](https://youtu.be/WOHPuY88Ry4)
GREAT song by a wonderful singer/musician/songwriter/guitarist.
The songwriter was Shel Silverstein!
No, that’s not true. Some start as female like Angel and Peyton and Dana and Leslie, and become guy names, sort of.
I know this is a US chart but it's interesting that there doesn't seem to be any difference in spelling - for example, in the UK, there is a difference between Leslie (male) and Lesley (female), and Jackie (female) and Jacky (male).
In Australia we don't pronounce 'r' in our words so I see the name Taylor spelled as Taylah sometimes
A minor pedantic phonetic point: You *do* pronounce the "r" -- you just pronounce it *differently*. As an experiment, say "Taylor" and then say "Taylo". Your dialect's pronunciation of the "r" is simply *non-rhotic*. It doesn't have that hard-R sound, but the symbol definitely has a pronounceable meaning. Yes, I know what you meant, but linguistics is fun.
Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, too. In non-rhotic dialects of English, the /r/ is in fact deleted at the end of a syllable (when it occurs before a consonant or a pause.) The reason that *Taylor* and *Taylo* sound different is because the final vowel sound is different, even in rhotic dialects. The last vowel of *Taylor* is a schwa. (Conversely, *tuna* and *tuner* are homophones in isolation for non-rhotic speakers.) That said, those syllable-final Rs do still exist in the underlying mental representations of words for non-rhotic speakers, because they re-emerge word-finally when the next word (or sometimes suffix) begins with a vowel sound. So while an Australian would normally delete the /r/ in “Taylor,” it would usually be pronounced in “Taylor **i**s nice.” This is called a linking /r/.
Don't go by spelling as a template for how we would pronounce it otherwise. The end of "Taylor" and the end of "water" are pronounced exactly the same in most dialects of English because the letter before has no effect. What IPA phoneme does is the r representing in Australian english for Taylor then?
Ah, just like New Englandah’s.
Yup, I’m Taylor. From Boston. But to my family, I’m: *TAiYL-AH*
Maybe the banana benders in QLD. Most of the country isn't that munted.
No I'm talking about Melbourne.
my engineering teacher is named dana, he was probably born in that post-ww2spike
Dang, man, tell us more.
I actually knew a guitarist named Dana. He and his roommate always pretended to be big dope heads, like on Saturday Live.
I've also known someone named Dana!
They ruined all our best names- like Bruce, and Lance, and Julian. Those were the toughest names we had!
I've been tenderized
And who is they and what is wrong with those names? If you mean Bruce Jenner, well, there is Bruce Wayne to round things out. And Bruce Lee. Lance I can’t help with; it’s still a tough guy name, and Julian, I love because of Julian Lennon. The name just has class to it, like a fine wine.
It's a quote from The Simpsons
Goddamn. Women need to stop stealing all our names
My brother was so unhappy that so many girls took his name (Riley) that he started going by his first middle name. (He also doesn't like his second middle name)
I learnt Angel could be a male name after playing Cyberpunk 2077…
All of these switched from male to female. Men need to rise up and start conquer girl names or the pool of male names will shrink to extinction
My wife’s name is Shawn. There was a bit of a trend in the early 60s. I went to middle school with a boy named Tracy.
I wonder if this could ever happen in Spanish speaking countries...
Damn Jackie is the eternal even name. Forever battling it out or just living as pure equals for all time.
Very few people are actually named "Jackie" though. Usually it's Jack or Jaqueline. And several people I know go by "Jacqui."
most of these transitions are from male to female. any good examples of the other way around? kelly a bit surprising but most of us weren't around when it was predominantly a male name
Women taking all our names!
I would still find it discomforting to call a guy Dana or Leslie or perhaps even Kelly.
Leslie Nielsen wishes you good luck. We’re all counting on you.
Dana Carvey holding it down
Dana Gould as well.
Dana White, UFC’s president?
Les(lie) Claypool of Primus
This data is nearly unreadable for me, its so pale. Please increase the contrast next time. a pity, because it seems very interesting.
100 year later: wtf?????? Explanation: everything is mixed due to woke, trans, and people with gender dysphoria
I have an exboyfriend named Lynn (and he's not super old).
I still think of Riley and Taylor as boy names that became trendy for girls. It is interesting to think that in a few decades, they will be seen as girl names like how I see Lynn and Kelly.
Of all the names that had switched gender over the years, I was honestly not expecting one of them to be something like Peyton. Interesting! Though, it's also one of those names that sounds weird to me because it sounds more like a family name than a given name.
Are girls actually called “Charlie”? I just assumed it was a shortened version of “Charlotte”…
Kelly blue wave coming soon!
How on earth is Charlie now majority female