Did he have a brother named Sue? If so, I might know the reason ...

> And he said, "Son, this world is rough

> And if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough

> And I knew I wouldn't be there to help ya along.

> So I give ya that name and I said goodbye

> I knew you'd have to get tough or die

> And it's the name that helped to make you strong."

Johnny Cash - A Boy Named Sue

Lyrics by Shel Silverstein [0]

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Boy_Named_Sue

Hilary is a boys name that became a girls name. It is also a surname (although the latter usually has a double L).

Hilary is an interesting case because, in the data the article is looking at, there are only 5 total years where there were more M Hilarys than Fs: 1936-1941. And even in 1936 the M:F Ratio was only 28:9 (that's not a reduced fraction; the total count was 37). If it's true that Hilary was once a popular boys name, the evidence for that claim is not in the SSA data.

I think that data only goes back to 1936? its too recent.

It may also have been more popular in the UK than the US.

As someone with an pretty unusual name, I think kids will always find a reason to make fun of you and it isn't always just the name.

True Story: My mom was a 2nd grade teacher for 30 years and in the 70s had a student with very 'hippie" style parents. They named their son Log Cabin. You can imagine how that went over in elementary school.

I suspect this is a big driver of the switch. Parents that do not want to give their boys a name that will cause issues later on.

Back in school it wasn't a problem, people knew "Loren" was male, "Lauren" was female. Now, an awful lot of people don't. It's an uncommon enough name that even if you were around back when that's how it worked you very well might not have known it.

As an adult I routinely get misgendered, but it's a so-what to me.

As a non-native English speaker I've learned never to gender English speakers from their names. I mean in emails and so on, when I haven't had a chance to meet them. No "Ask Ashley if she would like to join us...". "Would Ashley like to join us?" is the safe option.

Here's my favorite "Lauren"*: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Bush

*solely because her legal, married name is Lauren Bush Lauren. She actually changed it, which is gold (and honestly very sweet).

> As an adult I routinely get misgendered, but it's a so-what to me.

You're fortunate that the spelling is distinct. The story of Kim O'Grady is depressing.

https://www.thecut.com/2013/07/maybe-you-should-add-mister-t...

Loren adjacent. In high school my girlfriend was Lauren and mine is Lorin. Friends over pronounced our names to differentiate. It doesn’t bother me to get misgendered, either. It never lasts past hearing my voice or seeing me, though.

I went to school with someone named Loren. She was female, and the name didn't rhyme with Lauren; it was stressed on the final syllable.

Because it's there...

Weird comment, given that it was, not long ago, a common name for a male.

I'd wager if it weren't for Clinton, most people would still associate it with men.

How "not long ago" are you thinking of? Clinton was first a major figure in the 90s (and we also had https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fresh_Prince_of_Bel-Air ). And Clinton herself is from the baby boom generation; what male Hil(l)arys from that cohort do you have in mind?

Looks like it flipped in ~the 40s, by the ~60s had become rarer as a male name, and was pretty much a flop as a male name after the ~80s. So Clinton was born just when it started to take off for females (and in general - it was never as common as a male name) and there should have been in the same ballpark as as many male "Hilary"s of the same age.

https://namedaisy.com/us/name/Hilary

The male number does go to zero the year that Clinton became first lady.

Hilary Putnam (famous male philosopher) was born in 1926. I imagine soon after this generation is flipped.

It's kind of surprising that this is even allowed. A lot of countries require at least the first given name to match the gender. Some names might be deemed suitable for both genders.

In the USA, you can name your kid what you want. This avoids one ethnic group requiring everyone to have a name from their tradition.

Picabo Street (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picabo_Street).

Finland has some naming rules, but they don't necessarily apply to everyone in the country because they're rules for naming people born here, rather than those who later moved here.

There is a public index of forenames and surnames which I learned about when I was with my pregnant wife, and back then I was obsessively searching for my/our surname to see it increase by one when our newborn was registered and became "official".

Apparently within the whole of Finland there 22 men with the same surname as me, and 25 women. 21 of these people are in Finland and 26 are abroad but known.

Interestingly if I go to the forename search and look for people named "Steve" there are < 5 women with that name (i.e. non-zero, but the number masked for privacy reasons):

https://nimipalvelu.dvv.fi/en/forename-search?name=Steve

I'm curious about the origin there, though of course I've seen Steve -> Steffan -> Stephany, and similar translations in the past.

That sent me down a rabbit hole. Seems like having rules on what you can name your own kid are in place in several European countries. From an American perspective, I find this simultaneously off-putting (you are going to tell ME what I can name MY OWN child?!!) and also probably a net positive. I've often thought that a lot of tragedeighs could be averted if hospital registrars ran the names through a checker and pushed back on the parents to verify they really wanted that. But that's based on an assumption that it's often not intentional.

> you are going to tell ME what I can name MY OWN child?!! and also probably a net positive

Never a more succinct description of why it's hard to make things better.

The Catholic Church also regulates given or baptismal names:

Can. 855 Parents, sponsors, and the pastor are to take care that a name foreign to Christian sensibility is not given.

https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/docume....

Except the kid is not YOUR OWN child, in the meaning of possession. You are the custodian to the child, not the owner. The child basically is owned by itself and you are (usually) allowed to take care of it and lead it on that way.

And there are tons of laws that forbid abusing childs. Like you can't hit them, shake them. In the USA they perhaps have a law that you can't put them in a microwave, I dunno.

And the laws in the european countries that forbid silly names are usually not restrict your "owners rights", but to protect the kid. In Germany, I mean, over here they forbid that people called their kid "Rumpelstilzchen", the name of an imp/goblin in a very well know fairy tale. If the parents would have come through I expect that the kid would have ridiculed in school and outside quite a lot. Other kids can be cruel ... and even the odd mindless adult.

Actual names that german parents wanted for their kids, but that weren't granted: Bierstübl, Borussia, Crazy Horse, Gastritis, Grammophon, Januar, Joghurt, Kirsche, Liebknecht, McDonald, Millenium, Möhre, Pfefferminze, Pilulla, Porsche, Rosenherz, Rumpelstilzchen, Satan, Schmitz, Schnucki, Schröder, Seerose, Sputnik, Störenfried, Rasputin, Verleihnix, Waldmeister, Whisky, Woodstock

Some have outright negative connotation (Satan, Störenfried, Rumpelstilzchen), others are just extremely uncommon and thus standing out. For example, in Germany we don't name girls about other things like Melody, Crystal, Daisy, Faith, Grace, Haven, Hazel, Amber, etc. So if you name your kid after a product or a thing, e.g. Porsche, Kirsche or Joghurt, then it will draw the wrath of the other kids onto itself.

And THAT is the reason the authorities don't allow a name. It's not about unusualness alone. A lot of unusual first names were the parents could show "Esenosarumensemwonken is a first name in Nigeria" go through.

> Porsche

Really? With the spelling Portia it's a perfectly respectable girl's name in English, why not in German? Or are they completely unrelated? The English Portia stems from Brutus' wife.

Surely it was the name of a person long before it was the name of a thing?

Do they also forbid Mercedes?

I'm not sure "a lot" is accurate, although certainly more than I expected.

Looks like Europe has several countries with legal requirements, although the trend there is moving the other direction, plus Chile.

…Why would it be surprising for the USA not to have such a requirement?

The US has unusually common unisex naming. Most other countries don't.

We associate names ending with a vowel sound with the female gender. Other than that there's nothing gendered about "Hilary" as a first name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_(name) - It's not an exclusively female name. But in the US, you can give a kid pretty much any name you want (see the names Musk gives his kids these days).

I'm genuinely curious what your understanding of American culture is such that you find it surprising that Americans wouldn't tolerate government intervention in how they name their kids.

Would just say "my name is Hill"