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I wouldn't call Hayes gender-neutral. About the same number of girls were named Hayes in 2023 as James, and James would not be considered gender-neutral by most people either. Hayes has only even had a spike in usage for girls in the past few years, and if you've looked at the chart for any popular name, most temporarily spike for both genders at the same time. Hayes would need to become more popular and stick around a lot longer as a popular girl name before I would call it "gender-neutral."

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I personally enjoy soft names on boys, though Hayes isn't my favorite name regardless because it's a surname.