US boy names that became girl names and vice versa

Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa by FranchuFranchu on Monday November 02, 2026 @03:33PM (#50343312)

Yes, it stems from Latin. See Latin's case declension tables [0]

In Spanish and Portugese, -a is a feminine suffix and -o is masculine; that's where we get Patricio vs Patricia.

There are very few female names that end with -o and very few male names that end with -a in Spanish.

Another example is -ine in Joseph/Josephine. -ine/-ino/-in is a feminizing suffix in German and a diminutive in Spanish and French, that's why it's a femenine suffix in names. In English we have hero vs heroine.

[0]: https://dcc.dickinson.edu/grammar/latin/case-endings-five-de...

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Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa by SamBam on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:01PM (#50343680)

There are a few common Italian male names end in -a, though.

Andrea, Luca, Nicola are the most common.

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Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa by colechristensen on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:16PM (#50343878)

Aren't most of these cases of dropping the final s and maybe a vowel from a latin names instead of adding a diminutive a?

Andreas Lucas Nicolas, etc. (perhaps with different spelling in Latin)

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Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa by cwnyth on Monday November 02, 2026 @07:51PM (#50346516)

> Aren't most of these cases of dropping the final s

Yes, but also because those names were originally Greek.

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Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa by epolanski on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:17PM (#50343888)

All masculine names in Italian that end with -a come from Jews, old testament, with the exceptions of Enea and Nicola.

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Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa by Xirdus on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:49PM (#50344327)

All three examples in GP are ancient Greek origin.

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Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa by keybored on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @09:06AM (#50352157)

Andrea.

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[deleted]

Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa by embedding-shape on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:03PM (#50343707)

He's talking about Spanish, not Italian, a different language?

Lots of nicknames in Spanish end with an A though, Juanma and Joserra, basically putting together Juan Manuel and Jose Ramon.

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