perception of gender in names

[Elaine -HFB- Ashton]

FRITZ JUENGLING [juengling_fritz at SALKEIZ.K12.OR.US] quoth:
*>>>> adrian.pable at ENS.UNIBE.CH 05/27/02 03:28AM >>>
*>I always find it difficult as a German speaker to tell whether
*>certain English names are female or male, e.g. Laurie and Lyle

I've found Finnish names to be interesting especially since the language
itself doesn't have a grammatical gender but does have decidedly
male and female names. Since the language is so different the divination
of gender by name is a challenge in some cases since you cannot rely on
the endings to give you a clue. Lauri is a male name in Finland but in the
US, it could be used on either gender since there are no real rules for
naming as if there were such rules, we probably would know immediately
which gender 'Moon Unit" might be :) I suspect that naming and gender are
the domain of the culture and society the language lives in rather than
a function of the language itself.

http://www.sci.fi/%7ekajun/finns/alpha.htm
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/jukka.html

e.