{"items": [{"author": "Amelia", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772529552462", "anchor": "fb-772529552462", "service": "fb", "text": "yeah, like pants", "timestamp": "1456288372"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772529552462&reply_comment_id=772565250922", "anchor": "fb-772529552462_772565250922", "service": "fb", "text": "→ If you look through the names in the linked post, you'll see that about 1/3 as many actually do move the other way.", "timestamp": "1456321758"}, {"author": "Frederic", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772533639272", "anchor": "fb-772533639272", "service": "fb", "text": "I would like to know the story behind the female Elishas and the female Jaimes.", "timestamp": "1456290704"}, {"author": "Zach", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772533639272&reply_comment_id=772536718102", "anchor": "fb-772533639272_772536718102", "service": "fb", "text": "→ As for Jaime: Jaime Sommer was the name of 1970's TV character The Bionic Woman.", "timestamp": "1456294737"}, {"author": "Zach", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772533639272&reply_comment_id=772536822892", "anchor": "fb-772533639272_772536822892", "service": "fb", "text": "→ A guess for Elisha: the girl name Eliska is very popular with Czechs (and unknown to Americans), many of whom had immigrated by the 1880s when the typewriter was new technology, so I can imagine this is about 300 instances of reading handwriting the same expected way. Just a hypothesis.", "timestamp": "1456294961"}, {"author": "Gordon", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772533639272&reply_comment_id=772565076272", "anchor": "fb-772533639272_772565076272", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I would imagine \"Elisha\" to have been used in many cases simply as a variant spelling of \"Alicia\" (or a kind of intermediate form between that and \"Elisa\" or \"Eliza\").", "timestamp": "1456321545"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772533639272&reply_comment_id=772565695032", "anchor": "fb-772533639272_772565695032", "service": "fb", "text": "→ @Zach: In the 1880s Elisha was male in the US; it was female by the 1980s, with 4840 baby girls that decade. And then it was male again by the 2000s, with 3456 (yes, really) baby boys.", "timestamp": "1456322082"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772533639272&reply_comment_id=772565794832", "anchor": "fb-772533639272_772565794832", "service": "fb", "text": "→ (I think Gordon got it. In the 1970s \"Elisha\" probably seemed like a trendy alternative to \"Alicia\".)", "timestamp": "1456322232"}, {"author": "Gordon", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772533639272&reply_comment_id=772567536342", "anchor": "fb-772533639272_772567536342", "service": "fb", "text": "→ This kind of goes to one of my usual reservations about quantitative name studies, in that what they (invariably) track changes in over time is actuallly name spellings, which a single underlying name concept may have more than one of (and vice versa). Without seeing whether the same thing happened to \"Ashleigh\", I don't know what to make of the results for \"Ashley\".", "timestamp": "1456322982"}, {"author": "Gordon", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772533639272&reply_comment_id=772572935522", "anchor": "fb-772533639272_772572935522", "service": "fb", "text": "→ (Not that I have a solution for that.)", "timestamp": "1456325612"}, {"author": "Frederic", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772533639272&reply_comment_id=772573554282", "anchor": "fb-772533639272_772573554282", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I would never have considered Jaime = Jamie and Elisha = Alicia. Thanks! (So I guess it's supposed to be Jamie Lannister? That makes a lot more sense now; I was wondering what that one Hispanic name was doing in the middle of a bunch of Scottish names).", "timestamp": "1456325891"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772533639272&reply_comment_id=772573768852", "anchor": "fb-772533639272_772573768852", "service": "fb", "text": "→ @Gordon: On the other hand, sometimes spelling does matter. For example, in the 1940s \"Joe\" and \"Jo\" were both in the top 60 names, pronounced the same, but strongly gendered. So an analysis that combined them into \"Jo(e) -- gender ambiguous\" would be missing something important.", "timestamp": "1456326046"}, {"author": "Gordon", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772533639272&reply_comment_id=772574272842", "anchor": "fb-772533639272_772574272842", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I've only read the first ASoI&F book and I'm not a philologist, but I read \"Jaime Lannister\" as (JAY-mee) from the start. Was I really supposed to see those as all (or largely) strictly Scottish names? That would certainly make Jaime look more out of place. But I just took them all for made-up fantasy names, some more or less based on familiar things from the English language.", "timestamp": "1456326611"}, {"author": "Frederic", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772533639272&reply_comment_id=772574552282", "anchor": "fb-772533639272_772574552282", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Well, looking at the Lannister names more closely, I would say they're Anglo-Scottish, but definitely not Hispanic. And it turns out that his name is pronounced Jamie on the show, so that explains that.", "timestamp": "1456326939"}, {"author": "Josh", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772533639272&reply_comment_id=772574662062", "anchor": "fb-772533639272_772574662062", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I'd previously assumed that Jamie for women was just a feminization of James, ala Roberta, Georgia, etc.", "timestamp": "1456327013"}, {"author": "Zach", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772533639272&reply_comment_id=772575181022", "anchor": "fb-772533639272_772575181022", "service": "fb", "text": "→ @Jeff: Oh there we are, thanks. I thought Elisha was female in the 1880s which I found baffling.", "timestamp": "1456327329"}, {"author": "Frederic", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772533639272&reply_comment_id=772575210962", "anchor": "fb-772533639272_772575210962", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Elisha is on both lists!", "timestamp": "1456327361"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772533639272&reply_comment_id=772580834692", "anchor": "fb-772533639272_772580834692", "service": "fb", "text": "→ @Frederic: my guess is we're seeing a 1980ish female Elisha-instead-of-Alicia fad overlaid on top of a long term biblical-names-for-men decline and rise.", "timestamp": "1456331449"}, {"author": "Elizabeth", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772537047442", "anchor": "fb-772537047442", "service": "fb", "text": "This is country wide, right? I wonder what happens when you account for ethnicity/subculture. In particular I suspect F->M transition for Angel reflects a rising hispanic population.", "timestamp": "1456295245"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772537047442&reply_comment_id=772580989382", "anchor": "fb-772537047442_772580989382", "service": "fb", "text": "→ They publish state-by-state data, but I don't know about any source that combines this with ethnicity/subculture.", "timestamp": "1456331681"}, {"author": "Gordon", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772565435552", "anchor": "fb-772565435552", "service": "fb", "text": "Ask yourself which is more likely in this culture: a girl gets teased on the playground at school for having a name her friends perceive as (partly) masculine, or a boy gets teased for having a name his friends perceive as (partly) feminine. Ask yourself which one a typical parent is more likely to fret about causing their own kid problems. I think that dynamic alone probably causes much of the imbalance.", "timestamp": "1456321903"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772565435552&reply_comment_id=772565929562", "anchor": "fb-772565435552_772565929562", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I'm actually trying to explain the lack of imbalance! I see lots of forces pushing towards it being ok to give a girl a boys name but not give a boy a girls name, enough that I expected to see basically no names that went male to female. But the difference is only 2-3x (62 mtf, 26 ftm), which was surprisingly low to me.
(It may be mostly due to nicknames, though.)", "timestamp": "1456322380"}, {"author": "Gordon", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772565435552&reply_comment_id=772566129162", "anchor": "fb-772565435552_772566129162", "service": "fb", "text": "→ OK, I think I misread you on the basis of the headline of the post, then.", "timestamp": "1456322487"}, {"author": "Bronwyn", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772574736912", "anchor": "fb-772574736912", "service": "fb", "text": "I haven't done the arithmetic, but by eye it looks like the male-to-female list has more names that peaked strongly male (90-100%) and the female-to-male list has more names that were less severely imbalanced (60-70%). Similarly, it looks like perhaps the female-to-male names don't become as strongly male as vice versa. My judgement by eye could be off. But if not, perhaps this could partly explain things. It might be culturally more accepted to give a boy a name that is ambiguous but biased female (than one that is completely female). This could lead to the bias swinging back and forth in the middle, but would lead less commonly to complete shifts.", "timestamp": "1456327069"}, {"author": "Amelia", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772574736912&reply_comment_id=772576174032", "anchor": "fb-772574736912_772576174032", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I'd argue the opposite--it's more culturally accepted for women to borrow masculine traits than for men to embody feminine traits (femininity is a harder stigma to overcome bc the patriarchy). So things that are considered male either start to be viewed as androgynous (like pants or the name Taylor) or, more commonly with names I think, once they are marked as feminine they're considered too girly for boys to have (like the names Lindsey, Kelly, Whitney, and almost every name on the boy-to-girl list).", "timestamp": "1456327867"}, {"author": "Bronwyn", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772574736912&reply_comment_id=772577885602", "anchor": "fb-772574736912_772577885602", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I think you're saying the same thing as I was trying to get at. Things that are completely female are less likely to be switched to male. Things that are completely male can be switched to female.
Jeff was surprised that there were so many names that went female-male. I'm wondering if it's partly that they weren't really completely female to begin with.", "timestamp": "1456329191"}, {"author": "Bronwyn", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772574736912&reply_comment_id=772578040292", "anchor": "fb-772574736912_772578040292", "service": "fb", "text": "→ And also that once names switch male-female they perhaps do so more completely.", "timestamp": "1456329308"}, {"author": "Bronwyn", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772574736912&reply_comment_id=772578110152", "anchor": "fb-772574736912_772578110152", "service": "fb", "text": "→ (I edited the original post to clarify)", "timestamp": "1456329392"}, {"author": "Amelia", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772574736912&reply_comment_id=772578404562", "anchor": "fb-772574736912_772578404562", "service": "fb", "text": "→ yeah, it sounded like you were saying the opposite!", "timestamp": "1456329576"}, {"author": "Elissa", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772577845682", "anchor": "fb-772577845682", "service": "fb", "text": "\"Angel\" is pretty clearly a demographic change.", "timestamp": "1456329153"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/772529163242?comment_id=772577845682&reply_comment_id=772679706552", "anchor": "fb-772577845682_772679706552", "service": "fb", "text": "→ That was my thought too", "timestamp": "1456379519"}]}