About Those Unisex Names
Judy Ramsook
November 16, 2008
Names are like oxygen. We all need them. Without them people would not know what to call us or how to identify with us. And men have an advantage here.
They do not have to hyphenate their last names in order to keep their father´s/adopted parent´s or guardian´s last name. But married women do if they want to retain their maiden name, then there is the matter of all those unisex names that have entered the names´ database.
Names such as: Dana, Taylor, Alex, Chris come to mind here, just to name a few. But for the sake of brevity, I will focus on the first two as examples.
In the 90s´ series, The Xfiles, Dana Scully was the character played by Gillian Anderson. In real life there is the comedian, Dana Carvey, who is a man.
In the eighties, female pop music sensation, Taylor Dayne gave us hits such as: Tell It To My Heart, Don´t Rush Me and others. And I think you are aware of the number of males who have the name Taylor as their first name.
Now, don´t get me wrong here, I do not have a problem with women who have a masculine sounding name as a first name.
But what does bother me sometimes is when you receive an email from someone who happens to have one of these unisex names.
How do you, the email recepient go about finding out the gender of such an individual without asking something embarrassing like: Excuse me, but are you male or female?
And say you really try to find out this person´s gender by googling him/her and nothing you find there gives you a satisfying solution to your little dilemna.
Do you go about communicating with this person as if you think he/she is a male? Or do you ask, at the possible risk of having that person take offense at your question and not hearing from him/her again by asking, are you male or female?
This is not complicated. But if there is no other way to know, you may just have to ask in order to save yourself precious time and energy pondering the matter, or googling one Taylor, Dana, Chris or Alex when there are hundreds of Taylors, Danas, Chris´ and Alexes out there.
They do not have to hyphenate their last names in order to keep their father´s/adopted parent´s or guardian´s last name. But married women do if they want to retain their maiden name, then there is the matter of all those unisex names that have entered the names´ database.
Names such as: Dana, Taylor, Alex, Chris come to mind here, just to name a few. But for the sake of brevity, I will focus on the first two as examples.
In the 90s´ series, The Xfiles, Dana Scully was the character played by Gillian Anderson. In real life there is the comedian, Dana Carvey, who is a man.
In the eighties, female pop music sensation, Taylor Dayne gave us hits such as: Tell It To My Heart, Don´t Rush Me and others. And I think you are aware of the number of males who have the name Taylor as their first name.
Now, don´t get me wrong here, I do not have a problem with women who have a masculine sounding name as a first name.
But what does bother me sometimes is when you receive an email from someone who happens to have one of these unisex names.
How do you, the email recepient go about finding out the gender of such an individual without asking something embarrassing like: Excuse me, but are you male or female?
And say you really try to find out this person´s gender by googling him/her and nothing you find there gives you a satisfying solution to your little dilemna.
Do you go about communicating with this person as if you think he/she is a male? Or do you ask, at the possible risk of having that person take offense at your question and not hearing from him/her again by asking, are you male or female?
This is not complicated. But if there is no other way to know, you may just have to ask in order to save yourself precious time and energy pondering the matter, or googling one Taylor, Dana, Chris or Alex when there are hundreds of Taylors, Danas, Chris´ and Alexes out there.
Print
Email
