3 ms·

I'm not sure if names that end in 'n' "sound" more masculine, or it's just that there aren't that many female names that end in 'n'. But you might have a point

by pcurve 13y ago

I'm not sure if names that end in 'n' "sound" more masculine, or it's just that there aren't that many female names that end in 'n'. But you might have a point. Most popular female names end in 'a' 'e' or 'y'. http://www.babycenter.com/popularBabyNames.htm?year=2014 http://www.babycenter.com/popularBabyNames.htm?year=2014 But those female names that do end in 'n', I don't think they sound masculine. (lauren, Kathleen, Evelyn, Lillian, Allison, Carolyn) etc.

userbinator 13y ago
Coming up with a measure of how masculine or feminine a name is would be a great application for machine learning. The two features I can see that makes names more feminine are a larger number of vowels, and ending in a vowel. Maybe consonants are more masculine?
- pcurve 13y ago
  that would be very interesting, especially if you can factor in non-alphabet based names, such as ones from Asia, and find that there is a universal pattern. Popular Chinese names: http://www.chinawhisper.com/top-50-most-common-chinese-names/ http://www.chinawhisper.com/top-50-most-common-chinese-names... Popular Japanese names: http://japanese.about.com/library/weekly/aa050601a.htm http://japanese.about.com/library/weekly/aa050601a.htm
  - thaumasiotes 13y ago
    Your chinese names link is inexplicably ranking entire names (look at #s 5, 6, and 8, the girl's name is 秀英 xiuying in every case; 王, 李, and 张 just happen to all be incredibly common family names. 丽 li also occurs in the list with each of those, although it does seem to be much less common for girls with the surname 李 [also pronounced li]. Or notice how the top four male names are all 伟.). But I'm pretty sure no one is interested in which names occur how often with which surnames -- would you be interested in studying the breakdown of "Lisa" among people variously surnamed Black, Smith, Jones, etc? The chinese names link does accurately indicate that a chinese girl's name is usually distinguishable by the meaning; things like "beautiful", "graceful", "quiet", "compliant", and so on are popular. I would guess phonetic considerations are a distant second (though, as illustrated by the anomalous unpopularity of 李丽, they clearly do come into it).
    - pcurve 13y ago
      Thanks for the clarification. Reading through the list of just first names, the only phonetic pattern that sticks out is that there aren't any female names that start with K. But otherwise I would agree, I doubt most non-Chinese would be able to differentiate Chinese names by gender. www.ourbabynames.co.uk/chineseboys.php www.ourbabynames.co.uk/chinesegirls.php

by pcurve 13y ago

userbinator 13y ago

Coming up with a measure of how masculine or feminine a name is would be a great application for machine learning. The two features I can see that makes names more feminine are a larger number of vowels, and ending in a vowel. Maybe consonants are more masculine?

pcurve 13y ago
that would be very interesting, especially if you can factor in non-alphabet based names, such as ones from Asia, and find that there is a universal pattern. Popular Chinese names: http://www.chinawhisper.com/top-50-most-common-chinese-names/ http://www.chinawhisper.com/top-50-most-common-chinese-names... Popular Japanese names: http://japanese.about.com/library/weekly/aa050601a.htm http://japanese.about.com/library/weekly/aa050601a.htm
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  Your chinese names link is inexplicably ranking entire names (look at #s 5, 6, and 8, the girl's name is 秀英 xiuying in every case; 王, 李, and 张 just happen to all be incredibly common family names. 丽 li also occurs in the list with each of those, although it does seem to be much less common for girls with the surname 李 [also pronounced li]. Or notice how the top four male names are all 伟.). But I'm pretty sure no one is interested in which names occur how often with which surnames -- would you be interested in studying the breakdown of "Lisa" among people variously surnamed Black, Smith, Jones, etc? The chinese names link does accurately indicate that a chinese girl's name is usually distinguishable by the meaning; things like "beautiful", "graceful", "quiet", "compliant", and so on are popular. I would guess phonetic considerations are a distant second (though, as illustrated by the anomalous unpopularity of 李丽, they clearly do come into it).
  - pcurve 13y ago
    Thanks for the clarification. Reading through the list of just first names, the only phonetic pattern that sticks out is that there aren't any female names that start with K. But otherwise I would agree, I doubt most non-Chinese would be able to differentiate Chinese names by gender. www.ourbabynames.co.uk/chineseboys.php www.ourbabynames.co.uk/chinesegirls.php