Are there any languages or cultures that have genderless given names?

Question

In the U.S. where I live it is possible to be right almost all of the time when guessing the sex of a person from his or her given name: Ronald, George (Sand and Elliot notwithstanding), William, Michael (Learned notwithstanding), Warren and Chuck are all men's names, while Emily, Christine, Jasmine, Nancy and Camille are obviously female. Some nicknames go both ways (Chris, Sandy, Sam, etc.) but the full names are generally obviously on one side or the other.

In German, generally nobody thinks Karlheinz is female or Gisele is male. Cf. Spanish (Juan, Juanita, etc.), French (Michel, Michelle) and so on. Even in Latin, it was possible to tell Julia and Julius apart by letters alone.

Some languages have markers to indicate gender (see this Linguistics.SE question. That question discusses PIE affixes, but the scope is even broader. For example, in Japanese, -o or -ro endings indicate male names, while -ko and -e indicate female names. Note that my question is not limited to the scope of that question.

I don't know all the languages that have ever existed in the world, obviously, but all of the ones I have had contact with make a more-or-less clear gender distinction with given names. Are there or have there ever been languages that didn't make this distinction?

Answer 1

Check out the Punjabi language. Well spoken by the Sikh culture. Many, many, many names are genderless. Only in modern times (past 50–100 years) have there started to exist some names that are more associated with one gender than the other.

This website, Baby Names World, would fool you into thinking that's not the case. But I know many people whose names are registered there as female who are male and vice versa.

A Google search for "Sikh names" usually leads to results that mention how their names are genderless. The Wikipedia entry says, "Given names are not in general associated with a particular gender". If gender is to be indicated people say both their first/given name as well as their middle/last name.

Doing a Google search for the exact phrase of your question led to this Yahoo question from 2008 that states:

In Chinese it is normal for names to be for both boys and girls, because there isn't a specific group of "words" that are only used as names, where you can only choose your name from this group like in the Western World, eg. "Anna" isn't a word, but is something that can only be used as a (girl's) name. In Chinese you can use any word or words (max. 2 characters) you like as your name, provided it sounds good and you find it meaningful, just like the names of Native Americans commented above.

Of course, names that are flowers are generally girls' names and names with "strength" and such themes are generally boys' names, but other words are mostly neutral. In earlier times there was stronger distinction between genders, but today, where "flower" names and such are pretty much out of the fashion, you would not immediately know the gender of the person when you read their name. Korean names are also similar in this way.

Continuing on my Google search, I found this extremely lovely article about how Sweden is trying to pass legislature on allowing parents to give their child any name (like Jack or Lisa), saying that names should not be tied to gender.

So all in all there is at least three distinct groups of languages/cultures (and many more, I'm sure, are tied to these three groups) that either have genderless given names or are advocating for such a goal.

Answer 2

Vietnamese names, like Chinese, have no specific name set. So the choice depends on the parents or the person who gives the name. They can choose any syllable they like to combine into the name. But of course there's a set of words that are much more commonly appear in names because they are "more beautiful" words. However Vietnamese name have no limit in number of syllables like Chinese names, although most will have 3-4 syllables. Like Koreans, Vietnamese names are mainly Sino-Vietnamese but there are also pure-Vietnamese names

There's no restriction in gender of the name either, but most will have some bias in gender.

For example when hearing the names such as Mai 梅, Lan 蘭, Thúy 翠/脆, Vân 雲... you can guess that they are women's names most of the time because they describe things such as flowers and birds... They feel more "feminine" and "soft", albeit there are men who were given those names too.

On the other hand names such as Trung 中/忠, Hùng 熊/雄, Dũng 勇, Mạnh 孟... would have 95% chance to be a man's name because they express vigor, strength...

Most other names are more neutral in gender. The possibility for Phúc 福, Tú 繡/秀, Phương 方/芳... to be a man's/woman's name might be 50/50 whereas Thanh 清/聲/青, Hà 何/河... perhaps are a bit more "womanly" because in 55-60% of the cases they are a woman's name

In the past women often had Thị 是 and men usually had Văn 文 as the middle name so you could infer sex information from that. But nowadays those aren't favorable any more, replaced with more "fashionable" middle names, and there are many people who don't have middle names, so occasionally you can't get gender hints from that anymore. But when going along with an appropriate given name, sometimes it will reverse the gender bias or make the bias stronger. For example Anh 英 and Thanh 青 are neutral names, but with Vân 雲 as middle name then Vân Anh 雲英 or Vân Thanh 雲青 would be a woman's name. Or Dương 陽 is more or less a man's name, but Thùy Dương 垂陽 would be a woman's name

Note that the percentages are only from the sense of a Vietnamese person, not any specific statistics so it may not reflect exactly the actual number.

Answer 3

Tibetan and Bhutanese names are genderless. I'm not a native of those countries, but travelled to both, and found the same names used for both men and women. I've had it confirmed as much as well that the names there do not confer gender, ie they're used interchangeably between genders. Worth doing some more investigation to be sure. Cheers.

Answer 4

In Yoruba (and many other languages spoken in Africa) there is no gender distinction for personal names. Lukumi, a decendent form of Yoruba, has inherited the same feature.

In some IU languages, there is no gender distinction for some specific names or their forms. Here is a list of French unisex names

Answer 5

Turkish has many genderless names e.g Deniz "sea", Devrim "revolution", Yuksel "raise", Özgur "free", Ilhan "ruler", Ismet "ethical, honest", Fikret "idea, opinion", Ömür "lifetime".

I am sure there are more, but I am not aware of those. Some Turkish member can provide more examples. I guess the Turkic names are the ones that are usually genderless, unless they refer to something that is specifically female or male e.g Asena "she wolf".

Answer 6

In Mongolian, there are a number of strictly neutral names, e.g. names derived from planets, names derived from rivers, or "bad" names or "non-names"*. There are also names that have a strong tendency towards a certain gender, e.g. anything with "strong" or "steel" or "hero" in it for males, or "light" and "chrystal" for females. And there are names that are somewhat in-between

It also used to be common to give boys female names, and even dress them up as girls when they are small, if previously a boy had died in the family. This was/is done in order to confuse evil spirits - but this is not really related to names having an associated gender or not.

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*(bad names or "non-names" were often given if another child had died in the family, in order to make the new child less of a target for evil spirits. Typical examples are "Nameless", "Not this one", "Ugly" and so on)

Answer 7

Almost all Indonesian names are gender-specific. Usually, you can tell their gender by endings. Names that end in -a, -Vti/-Nti (preceded by a vowel or nasal), -e, -iN, and -ah are usually feminine. Names that end in -o, -u, -di, -C (consonants; except -h), and -CCi (except -rni, -tri, etc.) are usually masculine. Exceptions are Yoga, Dirga, Rama, Fitrah, and Sakti (all are masculine); and Lulu, Betik, and Daniar (all are feminine). Some are genderless though, such as Riski, Andika, Aditya, etc. But you can determine their gender by their nicknames. A Riski is usually a male if it is called Iki, but it is usually a female if it is called Kiki. Andika can be male (Dika, Andi) or female (Ika). Aditya can also be male (Adit) or female (Tia or Tya).

But in Indonesia, you can find some names that is one masculine in a part but feminine in another part, or vice versa. Or one gender in a part but genderless in another part. Nana is usually male in Sunda (mainly in West Java), but female elsewhere. Nur is genderless in Java, but feminine elsewhere (also in Maluku Nur- part is almost always not separated).

Answer 8

I'd say this (names indicating gender) might actually be quite a western-centric phenomenon and I'm not sure whether it's even mainstream in the world. It's totally possible that more cultures give genderless names than not. It's just that when names are transcribed into western alphabets, western people won't be able to tell what they originally meant anyways, so they still suppose that gender-specific names as such in their culture are the norm.

Coming to think of it, it's actually very weird for us Chinese to see that in western societies 1. there are strict distinctions between male names and female names which are not to be easily violated by social norms and 2. once a female gets married to a male, she changes her surname. Such things never happen in China. And also, your example about Japanese is largely incorrect. While the suffixes you listed are indeed common male/female names, there are also a whole lot of names which are neutral in the same manner as in Chinese. I'd say actually in modern Japan the later case might even be much more than the previous case. One funny historical fact is that during the sengoku period, there was a female lord named 井伊直虎(Ii Naotora), with 直虎 being a totally male and "strong" name (虎 is "tiger"). Well I guess the situation of this question(so many upvotes) reflects the fact that the majority of people here on SE are still westerners then :P