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A Boy Named Sue
“Researchers have studied men with cross-gender names like Leslie,” Dr. Evans explained. “They haven’t found anything negative — no psychological or social problems — or any correlations with either masculinity or effeminacy. But they have found one major positive factor: a better sense of self-control. It’s not that you fight more, but that you learn how to let stuff roll off your back.”
Here is much more, interesting throughout. I liked this part:
“In the past, there was more of a sense of humor, probably because fathers had more say in the names.” He said the waning influence of fathers might explain why there are no longer so many names like Nice Deal, Butcher Baker, Lotta Beers and Good Bye, although some dads still try.
As I've told you before, my dad had wanted to name me Tyrone. It could have been worse:
...why would any parent christen an infant Ogre? Mr. Sherrod found several of them, along with children named Ghoul, Gorgon, Medusa, Hades, Lucifer and every deadly sin except Gluttony (his favorite was Wrath Gordon).
Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 11, 2008 at 07:12 AM in Science | Permalink
Comments
One of my favorite cross-gender stories from my youth is getting invited to the Miss Teen Tennessee pagaent. Unfortunately, it was out of town and my parents were against letting me crash it. Wasn't planning on going in drag - just a nice suit.
Posted by: Jody at Mar 11, 2008 8:00:13 AM
My Dad was going to name me "Daphne" if I was born female, happily I was born male and my Mom selected the highly unusual moniker of "John" instead. No trans-gender naming issues here, just an empathy with Tyler and his close brush with "Tyrone".
Posted by: John at Mar 11, 2008 9:14:21 AM
My Dad was going to name me "Daphne" if I was born female, happily I was born male and my Mom selected the highly unusual moniker of "John" instead. No trans-gender naming issues here, just an empathy with Tyler and his close brush with "Tyrone".
Posted by: John at Mar 11, 2008 9:14:42 AM
I agree that most deleterious effects of weird names would be genetic - caused by the personality and IQ deficiencies inherited from the parents who gave the name.
But I wonder about the increased transaction costs accumulated over a lifetime of unnecessarily expending resources in spelling-out strange names, having stereotypical discussions about what they mean and how you got them.
Posted by: BGC at Mar 11, 2008 9:16:13 AM
Does wanting to name a future daughter "Paris Francis" make me a bad person?
Posted by: JKF at Mar 11, 2008 9:34:03 AM
Last name "Ward." I got my to agree (unwittingly?) to our kids with first initials "A" (Award) and "C" (Seaward). A third would have been "Lee" (Leeward). I doubt I could have gotten away with "forward" for the fourth.
Posted by: MW at Mar 11, 2008 9:37:53 AM
JKF: No worse than me wanting to get an Irish setter, name it Rouge, and move into a Cambodian neighborhood. ("Come here, Rouge!")
Posted by: Jody at Mar 11, 2008 9:38:32 AM
JFK: Shouldn't that be "Paris Frances"? "Francis" is the traditionally male spelling (and also my middle name).
"Anybody calls me Francis, I'll kill them"
"Lighten up, Francis."
Posted by: at Mar 11, 2008 9:44:05 AM
I think JFKs last name is Francis.
Posted by: josh at Mar 11, 2008 10:06:27 AM
My dad thought "Liberty Nell" was a funny pun (because of "liberty bell"). Luckily nobody else does.
Posted by: liberty at Mar 11, 2008 10:17:53 AM
1) If you name your daughter Allison Catherine she will be known to her friends as Ally Cat.
2) Check out the frequency of various given names in the Baby Name Wizard:
http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html
Posted by: John Kunze at Mar 11, 2008 10:20:58 AM
Not gender-bending, I suppose, if no one of any gender should have the name, but I narrowly avoided being named "Sweetface". My mother was a little bit strange and on a lot of drugs in the delivery room. Fortunately, my father objected.
(Instead, I got named after the person whose house I was conceived in. I didn't understand at first why my mother turned pink when I repeated this story.)
Posted by: Kat at Mar 11, 2008 10:39:45 AM
"2) Check out the frequency of various given names in the Baby Name Wizard:
http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html"
Haha. According to that website, use of my first name peaked at around 650 per million births, in 1940.
I guess that explains why nobody has ever pronounced it correctly on the first try.
Posted by: d.cous. at Mar 11, 2008 11:00:46 AM
Then there is the line from Johnny Cash's A Boy Named Sue "I knew you would to get tough or die".
Posted by: dittybopper at Mar 11, 2008 11:46:21 AM
Incidentally, the name Leslie was 85% to 95% male up until the late 1930's. In 2006, only 5% of babies named Leslie were male.
Posted by: Ken Hirsch at Mar 11, 2008 11:48:25 AM
1) If you name your daughter Allison Catherine she will be known to her friends as Ally Cat.
And in two decades she'll become a stripper.
Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at Mar 11, 2008 11:57:15 AM
I really like the name of the Florida Atlantic football player that Howard Schnellenberger recruited this year. He is a linebacker--
Yourhighness Morgan. He is mentioned here:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/yourhighness-morgan/
There was a theory about names like Stone,Rock, Nick, etc. being
good names for future football players
Posted by: Pitt at Mar 11, 2008 12:13:13 PM
Check out David Figlio's research. He uses boys with girls names as an instrument for disruptive behavior in middle school. Finds having such kids in your class hurts the amount you learn. I'm not saying I buy it 100% but it looks interesting.
He's also done work suggesting that kids with distinctively black names get poorer evaluations from their teachers than their siblings do.
http://www.aeaweb.org/annual_mtg_papers/2005/0107_1430_1102.pdf
Posted by: Michael Bishop at Mar 11, 2008 12:15:34 PM
Not really related, but I understand that the Tampa Bay [Devil] Rays have a prospect named Evan Longoria. Bet THAT's not going to be made fun of.
Posted by: d.cous. at Mar 11, 2008 12:52:57 PM
On the college swim team there was a Tyrone Jackson who was a red-headed Irish guy and a John O'Donnel who was black. The two of them never heard the end of it (which I'm sure was annoying to them--contributing to the 'roll off your back' thing?)
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw at Mar 11, 2008 12:54:09 PM
I don't have a source on this, but I have seen it claimed that there is a trend
for names that were purely masculine to drift over into being feminine. Once women
start to get the name, fewer and fewer men start to be given it. The trend does not
reverse. Leslie is a good example. Vivian is another. I know, Leslie Nielson is
around and so is the economist Vivian Walsh, but they are both old guys. Anybody
know a young Leslie or Vivian who is male?
And, for that matter, can anyone name a name that was a female name that moved over
to being a male name? I cannot think of any.
BTW, my great grandfather wanted a son for his first child. When my maternal grandmother
was born, he simply feminized a male name, neologizing "Jermai" out of "Jeremiah" (he was
a Primitive Baptist preacher who was also a school superintendent, living to be 96).
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Mar 11, 2008 1:04:26 PM
I find it interesting that names do not affect our personality, and I believe that it is true. One's name is just something that you are called by, why do you think nick names are so popular? I answer to my nick name as readily as my real name, and it sounds nothing like my real name. I think that no matter what you are called, even if we were called by numbers, you would still maintain your own personality. The only reason we have names is to identify ourselves. If you relate your name to your sense of self, it really does not affect it. Unless you just cringe everytime you hear it, you are not going to be affected by it whatsoever. Those who are, either go by a different name (middle name, or nick name of some sort), or they go ahead and legally change their name. Either is fine, but no matter what their personality is not affected. Although, I don't think I would have liked to have a male name...it would just seem awkward! But, at the rate that celebrities are naming their children random things (Apple?), and others are following the trends, there will be a child by every name imaginable, so no need to discriminate males with feminine names or vice versa.
Posted by: Nicole Dragan at Mar 11, 2008 1:16:54 PM
Barkley,
Also Meredith. The 1800's British Censusi also have a good number of male "Mary"s, presumably from Meriadoc, like the hobbit.
This is particular to English actually, since in other languages you can just mess with the ending. Like Eva Peron and Evo Morales.
Posted by: notsneaky at Mar 11, 2008 1:21:45 PM
I second Michael's recommendation of Figlio's paper, which is also called A Boy Named Sue. While I was not completely sold on his using suspensions as the best proxy for disruptive students, it was an interesting paper, and definitely ties to Tyler's post.
Posted by: Ryan at Mar 11, 2008 1:45:06 PM
Then you have the ridiculous female name of MacKenzie, which has both the literal meaning of "son of Kenzie" and was given to newborns with at least 54 (or was it 45?) different spellings in 2006.
A list of the 45:
Mackenzie, Mckenzie, Mackenzi, Mackenzee, Mackinzie, Mackensie, Mackenize, Mackinzy, Mackinsey, Mackenzy, Mackenzey, Machenzie, Mackynzi, Mackinze, Mackenziee, Mackanzie, Macinzee, Machkenzie, Macenzie, Mckinzie, Mckenzee, Mckenzi, Mckynzie, Mckinzee, Mckenzye, Mckenzy, Mckenzey, Mckenze, Mckenize, Makenzie, Makenzi, Makenzy, Makensie, Makynzie, Makynze, Makenize, Makynzye, Makynzi, Makinzy, Makinzie, Makinzi, Makenzee, Makinze, Makinsy, Mykenzie
Posted by: Sideways at Mar 11, 2008 3:37:00 PM
