"Tristan" now feminine given name

[Wilson Gray]

Uh, Fritz, you're not familiar with the male comic-strip detective,
_Kerry Drake_, who dates back to at least 1942? You're too young, I
guess. Oh, well.

BTW, it was in this strip that I first ran across the term, "disk
jockey." The DJ was known as "DDT," derived from "Darrell 'Downbeat'
Turner" and, presumably, punning on the name of the (in)famous
bug-killer, DDT.

No, Jon, I'm not about to make some outrageous claim based on
long-term memory as,  with increasing maturity, short-term memory
ebbs. Well, I did give it a try, but I couldn't even persuade myself.
:-)

-Wilson


On 2/23/06, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Tristan" now feminine given name
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Burns's poem is often said to refer to him, suggesting that Burns himself was sometimes called "Robin," which was once perceived as a common nickname for "Robert."
>
>   I believe he signed letters as "Rab," but never as "Bobbie" or "Robbie," which I am been told are thoroughly posthumous designations for the Scottish national bard.
>
>   How many today use "Jack" as a nickname for "John" ?
>
>   JL
>
> Brenda Lester <alphatwin2002 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Brenda Lester
> Subject: Re: "Tristan" now feminine given name
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Evelyn Waugh
> Male friends: Shirley, and Robin.
>
> From Bobbie Burns:
>
> Robin was a rovin' boy,
> Rantin', rovin', rantin', rovin',
> Robin was a rovin' boy,
> Rantin', rovin', Robin!
>
> FRITZ JUENGLING wrote:We have some friends whose daughters are named Robbie and Dani (sp?). Of course, the tendency to use traditionally boys' names for girls is well known. How often does it go the other way? Examples? I have two brothers-in-law whose names are Robin and Kerry. The former I know has been used as a boy's name for a long time, but even as a kid, I always felt uneasy about a boy being named Robin. Well, I still can't get used to Kerry.
> Fritz
>
> >>> alphatwin2002 at YAHOO.COM 2/23/2006 2:53 PM >>>
> My friend since high school was named Jim by her father. He wanted a boy, of course.
>
>
>
> Wilson Gray wrote: My mother has a woman friend down home in Texas named "Johnnie." Back
> in St. Louis, I had a male acquaintance whose first name was "Fay."
> "Fay" was also used as a hypochoristic equivalent of "ofay." The poor
> guy took a lot of ribbing, given that his ancestral line was probably
> black back to Africa.
>
> -Wilson
>
>
> On 2/23/06, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> > Sender: American Dialect Society
> > Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> > Subject: Re: "Tristan" now feminine given name
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > You mean to say that by a commodius vicus of recirculation, Allison is again a feminine name. Or still, as the case may be.
> >
> > "Alysoun" is the name of the female lead in the "The Miller'sTale." I've known several female "Allisons." (That was in the last century, however.)
> >
> > And I once knew a female dental hygienist named "Johnnie."
> >
> > JL
> >
> > James Callan wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> > Sender: American Dialect Society
> > Poster: James Callan
> > Subject: Re: "Tristan" now feminine given name
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > It's a longstanding trend for parents to give girls names that used to be masculine -- my wife, Allison, was named after her grandfather.
> >
> > A good Web resource that discusses naming trends, rather than just spotting them, is the Baby Name Wizard: http://www.babynamewizard.com/blog/
> >
> > There's an entry on the androgynous trend here (scroll down to the second post -- for some reason the direct link doesn't work): http://www.babynamewizard.com/blog/archive/2005_11_01_nameblog-archive.html
> >
> > It doesn't discuss Tristan itself, but if you plug the name into the site's Java-based NameVoyager, you'll see that it's never been a top-1000 boy's name in the US, hit the girl's list at #819 in the 1970s, shot to #218 in the 1980s, #148 in the 1990s, and was #116 in 2004. That translates to over 800 babies per million born in the US being given the name.
> >
> > James Callan
> > neologasm.com
> >
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