given names

[Anvita Abbi]

Hi,
Present Great Andamanese, an endangered language of the Andaman Islands,
India, is such a language where there is no gender distinction in the names
of a person. The reason is the names are given when the baby is in the
womb. Thus, names such as 'Loka', 'Jirake', 'Kobo' can be names for a
female child or a male child.
Anvita


On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 10:04 AM, 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]
>



-- 
Prof. Anvita Abbi
Centre for Linguistics
School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi 110067
www.andamanese.net
President: Linguistic Society of India
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20120722/63773f11/attachment.htm>