US boy names that became girl names and vice versa

Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa by awesome_dude on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:03PM (#50343712)

In a similar vein, the way women's names get shortened into a plethora of variants never ceases to surprise me

Elizabeth

Eliza, Liz, Liza, Lisa, Beth, Betty

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Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa by graemep on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:52PM (#50344360)

and Bess

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Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa by wnoise on Monday November 02, 2026 @05:19PM (#50344743)

And as memorialized in a movie and TV series, Buffy.

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Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa by rsynnott on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @03:48AM (#50349595)

In the case of Elizabeth, it was likely just so common at one time that many variants were needed. Also Mary (you mightn't think there are many variants of Mary, but, for instance, Polly is a variant of Mary. Figure that one out.) At one time, pretty much every family in Ireland had at _least_ one child called Mary. Sometimes more than one. This ultimately resulted in Ireland having two consecutive presidents called Mary (and in the 2011 election, which lead to Ireland's first non-Mary president in 20 years, two of the candidates were also called Mary or variants thereof). The Marys have now largely aged out, and there were no candidates called Mary at all in the most recent election.

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