[Ads-l] Name "Jay" goes unisex

[Kate Svoboda-Spanbock]

Jay De Feo, born 1929. Apparently Jay was a nickname from high school.
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Kate Svoboda-Spanbock
katesvobodaspanbock at gmail.com
310-880-3091



On Apr 30, 2016, at 6:38 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:

>> On Apr 30, 2016, at 1:13 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>> 
>> On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 11:36 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Jay Newton-Small
>> 
>> 
>> OTOH, _Jaye_ Padgett is a guy.
> 
> Not without issues because of it (he was a former colleague of mine at Yale).  Not psychological issues AFAIK, just having to correct faulty inferences (and of course misspellings). 
> 
> As for female "Jay"s, one factor may be the not infrequent use of "J" as a short form of women's names (Julia, Jennifer,...) as well as men's (Jason, Jared,...).  So maybe rather than naming a daughter "Julia" and calling her "J", some parents just cut out the middle-name and go with Jay.  
> 
> LH
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> -Wilson
>> -----
>> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
>> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>> -Mark Twain
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
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> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org


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