name changes
I've read some of the postings and noticed a couple that start out with one sex and are changed over to the opposite sex later.An example from my family is FREEBORN Wolf , daughter strangily enough of Peter Wolf .
Starting with her grandchildren the name is only found in her male descendants.I was wondering about how many of these names are there, out there.Shalom
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Hi Roy ,Two that were fairly common in the late 17th-early 19th centuries in my family's neck o' the woods (eastern Scotland) were Nicholas and Christian .Both were used there during that period exclusively as FEMALE names, but later reverted to male-only.Of course, there were many others elsewhere (e.g., Shirley , Evelyn , and Jocelyn in England), and the trend continues in our culture to co-opt male names and transmogrify them into feminine monikers. For understandable reasons, the opposite hardly ever occurs...Freeborn in your family being a notable exception, but that's not a name that's obviously gender-specific to start with.Can anyone on the board think of examples of obviously female-origin names that have shifted to predominantly male usage?- Da.
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In France......the name Marie is ambisexual. Examples include:* Jean Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire (Is an auto-erotic, venereal, fair major.)
* Jean-Marie LePen (Penile enema jar)
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Currently......these names seem to be going to the girls...Riley, Jordan , Peyton , Bailey , Devin , Harley...the previous generations switched these...Kelly, Tracy , Stacy , Jamie , Courtney .
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Quite true. Altho I personally know or know of guys with each of those names (except Courtney and Bailey), the only little people I've heard them attached to lately are girls.rst
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"Can anyone on the board think of examples of obviously female-origin names that have shifted to predominantly male usage?"Baxter and Webster , for two.-- Nanaea
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Didn't Morgan start out as a female name?
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I believe that the Welsh name Morgan started out as a masculine name, despite Geoffrey of Monmouth's popularizing it as a feminine name in the Arthurian tales.And, of course, the name Morgan has been in the lead as a feminine name in the U.S. -- from the 1980s up until the present.http://www.behindthename.com/php/search.php?terms=morgan&gender=both&srpf=p-- Nanaea
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Granted, these denoted female practitioners of occupations, but I doubt they were used as female FIRST names. I was lookin for names more in "A Boy Named Sue " vein.
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"Douglas"http://www.scot-irishpets.50megs.com/scottishnames.htm
"Though it was originally a girl's name, by the 19th century Douglas
was used for boys."http://scottishculture.about.com/library/blnames_de.htm
"Douglas was unknown as a forename until the 16th century - when it was used as much as a girl's name as for a boy."-- Nanaea
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Where did the name Bremner come fromI was born in aberdeen 1942. My father William Bruce was born in 1905
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Kewl! Didn't know that one! And in my own backyard, too, so to speak...; )
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