New English (?) name: Jhan

[Victor Steinbok]

Add Sean and Loren to the list (but not Shaun and Lauren).

     VS-)

On 3/21/2011 11:55 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> At 9:39 PM -0400 3/21/11, William Palmer wrote:
>> As to women's names which were formerly masculine, my impression is that
>> once the first girl gets a boy's name, no boy is ever given that name again.
>> Examples are too numerous to list....Kelly, Madison, Shannon, Beverly, Kay,
>> Vivian, ad infinitum.
>>
> This is frequently maintained (I'm sure longer ago than in Miller&
> Swift's _Words and Women_, 1977) and the general tendency is real,
> but it can't be as absolute or complete as you (and others) claim.
> There are a lot of names, Kelly among them but also Robin, Chris,
> Tracy, Sandy, Alex, Sam, Drew, Dana, Kim, Pat, Leslie, Lee, Jody,
> Jay(e), etc., etc., that have long been in use for both males and
> females without the instant "depreciation" suggested by such claims.
> To be sure, several of these are hypocoristics whose full forms
> (Christine/Christopher, Patrick/Patricia) are non-epicene, while
> others may be spelled differently according to sex of referent (the
> -i forms of Terri, Sandi, and Jodi I think are female-only, but the
> -y forms can go either way).  And some are epicene regionally, like
> my own name--I grew up as Laurie (for a character in _Little Women_)
> and only became Larry when I was trying to survive Junior High
> School, yet male Lauries abound in Scotland and even Canada.
>
> LH

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