Ornoth

As a man who tries to be sensitive to gender issues, I want to address one way that I think women and men both unconsciously perpetuate marginalization of women.

You might not think one’s given name could be the source of judgement and marginalization… but you’d be wrong.

It might sound like an incredibly minor nit, but what could be more core to one’s identity than the very name you use to refer to yourself, and the names you use for others?

Consider the difference in how you respond to a man who calls himself “Robert”, versus if he introduced himself as “Robbie”. Even if you’re looking at the same individual, most of us will have a meaningfully different initial impression of someone depending on whether he is introduced to us as “Billy” or “Willie” or “William”.

The underlying cause goes at least as far back as Latin, if not earlier. In Romance languages, words that end in open syllables (ending in a vowel sound like “Billy” and “Robbie”) are almost always grammatically feminine, while words ending in consonant sounds (closed syllables) like “Robert” and “William” are usually grammatically masculine.

Don’t get confused by the labels “masculine” and “feminine”. Those just represent two classes of words. I’m not saying that “Robbie” is really a girl’s name, or that “Janet” should be a boy’s name. At least not directly…

However, in Romance languages—and thus in Western society overall—the grammatical feminine has often been applied to things that are cute, small, young, informal, trivial, and (in gender terms) feminine. As a result, when we hear a name that ends in a vowel sound, we tend to ascribe those attributes to the person.

Calling someone “Scotty” is not just a less formal way to address “Scott”; because names ending in open syllables carry this historical baggage, it also carries with it the idea Scotty is more diminutive or more childish or less serious than Scott. And it isn’t much of a leap to infer that Scotty himself is inferior, subordinate, and less capable than his “older brother” Scott. Just as Robbie is less adult than Robert, and Jimmy is less professional than James.

This becomes an even greater concern when applied to women. We have very different preconceptions when we meet a girl named “Chrissie” than a woman named “Christine”, or “Shelly” versus “Michelle”. When a woman’s name ends in an open syllable, the association with grammatically feminine attributes like smallness, informality, and youth becomes really problematic. They didn’t call her “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” because it’s a strong name; they used it because (in contrast to her occupation as a Slayer) it’s such a weak, fluffy, impotent, “girly” name.

What’s worse is that we as a society still prefer to name women something cute and feminine, automatically hampering our daughters’ chances of being taken seriously right from the maternity unit. And even then, women will often choose to abbreviate their name into a “cute” nickname that ends in an open syllable.

When I first wrote this article, I looked at my employer’s “About Our Team” page. After removing the outliers from our India office, I counted up the names that end in open syllables, and grouped them by gender. What did I find? In a progressive software company, 73 percent of the women listed names that end in vowel sounds, while only 13 percent of men did. Our female employees were more than five times as likely to bear names associated with smallness, informality, and inferiority than their male coworkers.

I also checked out the most popular 100 given names for each gender over the past 100 years, thanks to this Social Security Administration page. While not quite as dramatic, the trend is inescapable. Women were 2.5 times more likely to have open-syllable names as men (56 percent to 23 percent).

Bottom line, we’re saddling our daughters with names that trivialize them from childhood through adulthood.

Of course, this only applies to Western society. The Japanese language doesn’t natively have closed syllables at all, which can cause some confusion among Westerners. It shows the extent of our bias that you might guess that Japanese people named Tomoya, Takeshi, Makoto, Kenichi, Junichi, Yuji, Katsumi, and Koki were female. They’re not; those are among the most frequently-used male names in Japan.

As a final parting shot, I encourage you to take a moment and consider your emotional response and preconceptions based on the following pairs of names. For me, the conclusion is absolutely clear that using a name which ends in a vowel sound is both trivializing and marginalizing, and something I’d suggest be avoided, especially by progressive-minded parents.

With sincere apologies to those of you who might already bear such names!

For some years now I’ve had a Post-It Note bearing my list of possible cat names. That being singularly prone to misplacement, I thought I’d enter them here. Perhaps they’ll be of some amusement value.

I imagine I’ll make periodic additions to this post in the form of additional comments.