given names

[Chao Li]

Dear Giorgio,

I personally do not think Chinese truly fits with what Prof. Newmeyer
described in his request because *most* names in Chinese are not
gender-neutral. I believe this is true not only in written form but also in
spoken form. In the case of "杰"，it is typically used in male given names
though one can sometimes encounter it in female given names.

Best,
Chao





On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 1:27 PM, <> wrote:

> Dear colleague,
>
> In Chinese (and Sinitic in general) many names are gender-neutral, but not
> all of them. For instance, 杰 jié ('outstanding') is a very common name used
> both for boys and girls; very often the only clue to the gender of the
> name-bearer is the usage of certain characters/morphemes, the meaning of
> which is associated with feminine or masculine 'images', let us say.
> Note that Chinese does not mark gender on adjectives and nouns; I suspect
> that there might be a connection between this characteristic and having
> gender-neutral names (see the jié example above).
>
> Please let me know if you should need more data on that. Best,
>
> Giorgio F. Arcodia
>
> --
> Dr. Giorgio Francesco Arcodia
> Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
> Dipartimento di Scienze Umane per la Formazione
> Edificio U6 - stanza 4101
> Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo, 1
> 20126 Milano
>
> Tel.: (+39) 02 6448 4946
> Fax: (+39) 02 6448 4863
> E-mail: giorgio.arcodia at unimib.it
>
>
> On Sun, 22 Jul 2012 10:04:00 -0700
>  Frederick J Newmeyer <fjn at U.WASHINGTON.EDU> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have a question posed to me by a non-linguist friend that borders on
>> trivia, but is perhaps deeply interesting nonetheless. Does anybody know of
>> a culture where no distinction is made between male given names and female
>> given names? That is, cultures where if somebody says to you something like
>> "I'd like you to meet Gkz'itfo some day," you have no cues as to whether
>> Gkz'itfo is a man or a woman. English and some other European languages
>> have SOME names like that (Lee, Kim, Sandy, etc.), but I wonder if there
>> are places where ALL names are gender-neutral.
>>
>> Thanks. I'll summarize.
>>
>> --fritz
>>
>>
>> Frederick J. Newmeyer
>> Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
>> Adjunct Professor, U of British Columbia and Simon Fraser U
>> [for my postal address, please contact me by e-mail]
>>
>
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