humor >> A Girl Named John

It’s getting nearly impossible to tell the girls from the boys by their names. The first time I heard of a little girl named Sydney, I thought it was cute; likewise for a Charlie and a Riley. But when I met a two-year-old girl named Harrison, I nearly choked. What’s next? A girl named John or David? This explosion in unisex names is causing some problems.

One notable challenge for schools is dividing the classes evenly. When my older daughter started kindergarten last fall, she brought home a roster of her class. Besides my daughter’s name, there were only four names that I could place as boy or girl. I guessed at the others. I picked Taylor, Selby and Ansley as girls and got two out of three correct. I was fairly confident that Gibson, Jordan and Lawson were boys but I was wrong on two counts. It turns out that there are only four boys in Abby’s class of 13. I think the director made the same mistakes I did.

To me, the biggest violation of the he-to-she names is the new style of naming girls “son” names, like Harrison, Addison, and Carson. It doesn’t take an advanced degree in lexicography to figure out the origin of these names. Harrison means “male child of Harris”. Carson means “male child of Carr”, and so on.

I picture a pretty, beribboned, little girl of ten who is curious about her name. At school, her classmates had been bragging about the history of their names. Her friend, Catherine, was named after a saint and a queen. Her friend, Sarah, was named for an important woman in the Bible. Her friend, Mary Elizabeth, has countless famous namesakes including the mother of Jesus. Eagerly little Bateson types in her name to the baby naming web site and hits enter. Up pops, “Bateson – male child of Bates”. She bursts into tears and yells at her mother, “Why did you name me after a son of a Bates?”

Naming girls after boys has been happening for a long time. In the 1880’s, my great-grandfather was named Beverly. In the 1980’s, my college roommate was a Beverly. At some point, Beverly became exclusively a feminine name. My own name, Kim, used to be a male name and so did Evelyn, Florence, Maud and Alice.

A friend of mine recently became a grandmother of two baby girls born only a few months apart. Proud and delighted in her new status, she was eager to show pictures of the little darlings. However, when I asked her what their names were, she became visibly embarrassed and answered quietly, “Hayden and Ezra.”

I stifled my giggle and tried to comfort her. “Don’t be embarrassed, Carol. Your grandmother was probably shocked at your name, too. In her generation, Carol was spelled Carroll and it was a man’s name.”

This brings up another problem with unisex names. Once they go to “She”, they don’t go back to “He”. The pool of names for boys is shrinking rapidly. As soon as a hot, cool new boy’s name starts making the top ten list, the girls start using it. It’s only a couple of generations before it’s ruined. The pool of male names has dwindled to a paltry few old standards like John, David, Matthew, Michael, Daniel and Thomas. While these are wonderfully masculine names, they’re getting worn out with overuse.

Of course, one obvious solution would be to name boys after girls thus fighting fire with fire.  Remember Johnny Cash’s song, “A Boy Named Sue”? That kid had a rough time with his name but it spurred him on to be ultra macho. It would only take one Linda winning the Heisman trophy for the trend to take off.

Another option for parents of boys is to search for old-fashioned names that have yet to be expropriated by the girls. Some of these obscure names would be unique in this generation and they would be unlikely choices for girls. Some examples are Elmer, Oswald, Wilbur, Herman, Eugene, and Luther. On second thought, a few more Davids and Matthews wouldn’t be so bad.

A lot of parents with unisex-named children may disagree with my opinions but here’s a warning to them: When your Taylor is 16 and asks to spend the night with Dylan, you’d better find out if it’s a he or a she.