View Message

"Why not name your child something that you find pleasing?"
I happen to find boys 's names on girls not pleasing and I think I'm entitled to my opinion, just as you have yours.It's not some kind of abstract principle. Furthermore, in some languages, including my own (Italian), with a few exceptions a "solid black line" between male and female names exists de facto because of the way the language works, and most names are gendered very clearly, we don't have surname-derived names, for instance. A girl named Giuseppe or Giovanni would have a hard time indeed (and probably it's illegal to name a girl that in Italy anyway).It's also interesting to see how the "black line" seems to persist when it's a matter of giving traditionally female names to boys, you don't meet many boys named Elizabeth or Helen, do you? Aren't they also "just names"? You make it sound as if I had written something along the lines of: "Parents who bestow male names on girls should be tried for child abuse". I just said it wasn't my style. Of course it's not a matter of life and death, and there's lots of things that are not in the 10 Commandements that I'd rather not do.