Emerson

Emerson is a factual, historically masculine name. Timeless and ageless on males.
It's trendy and silly on girls. I give it about three more years before it nosedives like Shawn and Kelly before him.
If you wanna jump on that trendy bandwagon, remember, your daughter will be the one to bear that brunt.

As with any other name ending in "son" they usually mean "son of Emery" or "son of Maude" (Madison). So technically the name means what Wmwry means which is brace and industrious! Maude means "battle brave." So get past the son part because the name is reference to the name in the meaning. Emerson=Emery, Madison=Maude, Addison=Adam. Look at what those names mean and you'll know the true meaning of these "son" names.

All of you saying it's a boys name because it's son of Emery. First of all, that's an outdated archaic way of making names -irrelevant in this day and age when people can name their child Hashtag.

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Second, if you must insist on that proving it's a boys name, please be aware that that's only in the Germanic use of the name:

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English it means simply Brave/Powerful
American use meaning Brave/Powerful
German use meaning Son of Emery, Brave and Power

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Please don't discourage people from naming their child a certain name because you staunchly believe it MUST be for a boy or girl. We live in a world where we're moving away from a baby being ONLY a boy OR a girl.
Names are as fluid as sexuality. And Americans don't live in Germany so...

@Anonymous 6/30/2014
Um, what? Your argument makes no sense at all. The meaning of a name doesn't change just because it was used somewhere else if it derives from the same root. For example, the name Hannah means "favour, grace"- if I move to China and name my daughter Hannah, does that mean I can say her name means "blue lake" or something? No!
Emerson is an ENGLISH surname-turned-first name (not German) and it does, in fact, mean "son of Emery", and it will always have that meaning no matter where you are in the world. I don't even know where you're getting the "brave/powerful" bit from. Even the names Emery and Emmerich don't have that meaning. Oh and also, "American" isn't a language, lol.
Frankly, it's annoying and quite sickening seeing people write false information about meanings on names like these just to try to justify the name's usage on the opposite gender. Go ahead and follow that tired fad to be "younique" and "tryndee", but Emerson is an intended masculine name with a masculine meaning and it will always be, and there's nothing you can do about it.

My name is Emerson, and I have done some other research on the history of the name. Some legends about the wizard Merlin (also spelled Merlyn, Merlynth, etc) have suggested that his original name was Emerys. So a variant of the origin of Emerson could be 'Emerys' son'. Cool, huh? (The author T. A. Barron first lead me to this discovery by his Merlyn character having the name Emerys.)

Couldn't this also mean "son of Emer"? I kind of doubt it, but it's just a theory.