Gender trends

[Tao]

Random fact of the day, did you know that knitting used to be a manly activity? Girls weren't allowed to do it. Men would actually be trained in knitting (probably as an apprentice?) before they could become master knitters!

With names and dress also following the trend from predominately male to unisex to predominately female, do we have any thing that trended the other way? If so, do we know why?

[Katya]

Random fact of the day, did you know that knitting used to be a manly activity? Girls weren't allowed to do it. Men would actually be trained in knitting (probably as an apprentice?) before they could become master knitters!

With names and dress also following the trend from predominately male to unisex to predominately female, do we have any thing that trended the other way? If so, do we know why?

I suggest that if you really want to explore this, you should start a new thread. (Heaven knows this thread is complicated enough, already.)

[Tao]

Random fact of the day, did you know that knitting used to be a manly activity? Girls weren't allowed to do it. Men would actually be trained in knitting (probably as an apprentice?) before they could become master knitters!

With names and dress also following the trend from predominately male to unisex to predominately female, do we have any thing that trended the other way? If so, do we know why?

I suggest that if you really want to explore this, you should start a new thread. (Heaven knows this thread is complicated enough, already.)

Forgive me. I came to the same conclusion upon realizing what thread I'd posted in.

[Marduk]

I wanted to explore this more, Tao, so I went ahead and created a thread for you. You mention names trending that way, I'm sure if we looked at it we could see names that went the other direction.

I can't think of anything at the moment that started as predominantly female, and is now predominantly male, but I can think of a few things that went from predominantly female to unisex. Cooking comes to mind. As does showing emotion (although this still lags as mostly female, the trend has been shifting.) Nursing is becoming more male, as is secretarial work.

[Unit of Energy]

Tao is spot on about names trending from men to women. In fact names trend from family names to male given names to female given names. I will be quite impressed if you find a single name that trended from female to male.

[Katya]

I will be quite impressed if you find a single name that trended from female to male.

"Alma." (But only within Mormon culture. And it wasn't a common female name within that culture, to begin with.)

[Marduk]

Yep, that's my momma's (and sister's) name. It means "soul" in Spanish.

[thebigcheese]

What about Ashley?

[Katya]

In fact names trend from family names to male given names to female given names.

What about Ashley?

Ashley followed the path mentioned by U. of E.

[Katya]

Yep, that's my momma's (and sister's) name. It means "soul" in Spanish.

Doesn't it mean something in Latin, as well?

I knew a girl named Alma who lived with her brother when they were both single and at BYU, leading to quite a bit of confusion in the ward. (They had decided that she was a boy and made her and her brother home teaching companions.)

[Unit of Energy]

honestly it is only in Utah or Idaho that you will commonly find the default gender for Alma being male. Most anywhere else Alma is distinctly female.

[Tao]

Thank you, Marduk.

Doesn't it mean something in Latin, as well?

From the root Almus: nourish, kindness. From thence: alms, alma matter, et al.

And it really didn't trend from female to male, rather it arose as female in one culture and male in another.

[Yarjka]

Did you know that the majority of doctors in Russia are women? Just an interesting fact.

[Katya]

Thank you, Marduk.

Doesn't it mean something in Latin, as well?

From the root Almus: nourish, kindness. From thence: alms, alma matter, et al.

And it really didn't trend from female to male, rather it arose as female in one culture and male in another.

Right, but, chronologically, it was still female before it was male.

[Tao]

Right, but, chronologically, it was still female before it was male.

Perhaps. I'm not sure if that's something we'd ever be able to pin down. Scholars have now found masculine occurrences of Alma in Semitic cultures pre-dating the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem. As Latin would have been in its oldest form at that point, trying to decide which came first is a bit of an academic coin-toss.

[Marduk]

I actually know a few guys named Ashley; maybe that one is more unisex? Also, what about names that are pronounced differently depending on gender, that change entirely for different languages, like Michele? In English, female. In French, male.

[Katya]

I actually know a few guys named Ashley; maybe that one is more unisex?

http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager#p ... exact=true

"Ashley" for boys dates to at least the 1880s and comes back a bit in the '70s, but starting in the '60s, it's been dominated by girls. I wouldn't call that spread unisex.

[Yarjka]

I always found it interesting that the short from for both Aleksander and Alexandra in Russian is Sasha - so Sasha can be either a girl or a boy, and no one seems to mind.

Same with other names that are feminized from the male name. I suppose it's like Joseph and Josephine in English - where Joe works as the short form for both (although usually spelled Jo if it's a girl).

[Unit of Energy]

there are many names that are unisex at this point in time, however that does not change the holding pattern for which way a name trends, it just shows that we are in a time for the trend to have both male and female names.

[Tao]

Cooking comes to mind.

Cooking is interesting, as domestically it is dripping with feminine stereotypes yet professionally I'd say it seems to be one of the more male-dominated professions.

Also of note: I'm looking at it in a very US-centric skew. As Yarjka pointed out, other cultures have other trends that may vary substantially from what we see in the States.