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ArchivesRe: name changes
in reply to a message by roy
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.
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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