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Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa by goda90 on Monday November 02, 2026 @01:00PM (#50340831)
A name I was surprised by was someone I know naming their daughter Miles/Myles, which is such a male name in my mind. It might even be based on the Latin word for soldier. It's not one I've seen used for a girl anywhere else, yet.
Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa by Terr_ on Monday November 02, 2026 @01:31PM (#50341339)
Edited slightly for series spoilers:

> "Well, I wish you every joy," Miles went on [...] He managed a wink. "Name the first one after me, eh?"

> [She] grinned. "I'm not sure she'd appreciate that. Milesanna? Milesia?"

> "Milesia sounds like a disease," Miles admitted, taken aback. "In that case, don't. I wouldn't want her to grow up hating me in absentia."

-- Memory (1996) by Lois McMaster Bujold

In the series, Miles having a name meaning "soldier" is, er, persistently thematically significant.

Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa by YeGoblynQueenne on Monday November 02, 2026 @02:30PM (#50342331)
Wow. Kind of blast from the past. I haven't read that btw, how good is it?
Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa by Terr_ on Monday November 02, 2026 @03:12PM (#50342984)
I'm obviously a biased source, but I metaphorically keep the Vorkosigan books [0] in a similar place with (the more-famous) Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. Fun reads to return to that I find very quotable.

Interestingly, the first few books are about Miles' parents, but it's neat to see what the most popular character does/doesn't inherit.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorkosigan_Saga

Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa by phainopepla2 on Monday November 02, 2026 @07:02PM (#50346087)
Not sure if they person you know is a millennial, but I have noticed of this (my) generation that they love not only gender-ambiguous names, but to name girls with decidedly male-coded names.
Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa by thaumasiotes on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @02:43AM (#50349201)
> It might even be based on the Latin word for soldier.

It isn't!

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Miles

>> From Old French given name Milo, of problematic origin, possibly from an unknown Germanic element, or a short form of Slavic names beginning with mil- "grace, favor". The English form is associated by folk etymology with Latin mīles ("soldier").

It would be nice to know that the Old French name didn't secretly happen to match the hypothetical Old French form of the Latin word for soldier. I sadly don't personally know how to check what form miles, militis would have taken in Old French.

A good heuristic, though, is that if the French name had come from this very common Latin word, someone would have already thought of that (as has in fact happened many times) and it would have been thoroughly investigated. The evidence in support must be somewhere between "wafer-thin" and "robustly contradicted by the known sound changes from Latin to French".