The Gendering of Gender-Neutral Names
More American parents are choosing names that cross the gender binary. But they're mostly crossing in one direction, and that tells us something important.
There’s an interesting Sarah Zhang piece in the Atlantic this week about the rise in gender-neutral baby names, which Zhang correctly attributes to the rise in unique baby names — parents no longer want their child to be one of seven Jennifers or Johns in the class; they want names that feel original, reflective of some value they hold, and that feel creative. As a result, many names are crossing the gender binary. If a kid is named Jayden, Phoenix, or even Charlie, it’s tough to tell that kid’s gender from the name alone. And while in the 80s and 90s there were Taylors and Alexes, the sheer number of kids with gender-neutral names is higher than it has ever been.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that our gender politics are much better.
As Zhang points out in the piece, there is a long tradition of names crossing the gender binary, but they go almost universally one way: From male to female. “Beginning in the mid-20th century, in fact, a whole suite of names that end in the long-e sound—Leslie, Ashley, Courtney, Hillary, Sandy, Lindsay—went from androgynous or masculine names to almost exclusively feminine names,” she writes. We don’t see the reverse, of large number of people choosing traditionally female names for their sons, and eventually coding those names as male.
This USA Today article about girls names that cross over and boys names that cross over is almost comical in the lengths it goes to to insist that all sorts of names that seem to have been invented five minutes ago (or simply used to be last names) are “girls” names now given to boys: Rivers, Channing, Bentley, Chandlor, Baylor. Not a single name on the list is anything that a critical mass of normal people would code as a girls name. By contrast, the list of boys names that have crossed over to girls names is pretty familiar: Ezra, Noah, Tyler, Christian, Jasper, Julian, Alexander, Michael.
This may seem like a small thing. But the question of gendering baby names is an interesting one to me, because it’s one of the many subtle social norms that is so ingrained it goes broadly unnoticed, but reflects something pretty fundamental that feminism has yet to disrupt: That male stuff is presumed to be valuable, while female stuff is less so.
We see this in what feminism has and has not accomplished. Feminists have kicked down all kinds of doors for women, opening up opportunities for us to enter into traditionally male-dominated workplaces, to pursue higher education (until very recently in the US, a nearly exclusively male pursuit), to play spots, and even to change the way that we dress, wear our hair, and express our gender in our aesthetic and sartorial choices. All of these previously mostly-male places and spaces and choices were presumed to be valuable and worth fighting for access to (and for the record, I think the feminists were right on in fighting for access to them). Women now dominate in undergraduate institutions and most graduate programs; no one looks twice if we wear pants or play sports; it’s not uncommon to see a woman with short hair or a muscular build.
And it’s increasingly normal to meet a girl named Charlie, Frankie, Alex, or Kyle.
A half century after the second-wave feminist movement peaked, it remains uncommon for men to work in traditionally female jobs, as secretaries, nurses, or daycare workers. It remains rare (and apparently for many conservatives, quite emotionally triggering) to see a man wearing make-up or a dress. While women have surged into the workforce, men have not taken up an equal amount of childcare and housework at home.
And it remains vanishingly rare to meet a boy named Sue (or Charlotte or Francine or Alexa or Kylie).
All of these subtle preferences for the male and the elevation of the traditionally masculine over the traditionally feminine in work and home have huge consequences for gender equality. If we want to be equal, we need men to step into traditionally female roles, too. And don’t get me wrong, many men are — they spend more time with their kids than ever, for example. But women have taken on much more in traditionally male spaces than men have taken on in traditionally female ones.
That isn’t to say that you should name your son Annabelle (although feel free to name him Jill). It is to say that the names Americans collectively choose for our children reflect something other than simply a desire for novelty or uniqueness or even the way words sound — Olivia currently dominates as the most popular girls name in the US which suggests parents love the sound of that name, and a boy named Olivia would be an original indeed; and yet, boys named Olivia are nowhere to be found. The names Americans collectively choose for our children say more than just the name itself; they tell us everything about the ways in which we are happy for our girls to be like our boys, but far less thrilled at the idea of our boys being like our girls.
xx Jill
This reminds me of the well-studied phenomenon where once a job changes stereotypical genderedness, its prestige and compensation change oh so predictably. For example, when computer programming was a woman's job, it was largely considered boring and menial and maybe only a slight variation from work as a secretary, but around the start of the microcomputer revolution suddenly it flipped to a male-centric job and became an intellectual and better paid career (with a depressingly misogynistic culture springing up around it). Or going way further back in history, brewing ale switched at some point from women's work to men's work and everything changed about its prestige — or vice versa, when medieval men did much more household work that later switched to women's work.
It also brings to mind that old brainteaser about the father and child in a car crash, the father dies on the scene but when the child is brought to the hospital the surgeon says "I cannot do this — this is my son". It doesn't work nowadays: nobody younger than me would have a hard time conceptualizing that the surgeon could be the child's mother, or the child have two fathers, or there being a blended family etc. However, I do wonder if you replaced 'father' with 'mother' and 'surgeon' with 'nurse' whether it would still trip people up.
Men can become secretaries any time they want. There's nothing stopping them and never has been. But they don't because, generally, men don't want to do that kind of work and never will. If low-skill male workers want a job, they go into bricklaying, maintenance, or construction. What is with this feminist obsession with making men into something they're not?
PS: If there ever is a boy named Olivia, I pray to God he ends up gay, because I guarantee that the overwhelming majority of straight women will never bang a guy named Olivia. Sorry, I live in the real world, not some bizarre progressive, utopian echo chamber.