Comments on: Gender Trouble

By: ajay

ajay — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 09:49:57 +0000

“I briefly thought Gareth was a female name, for some reason—probably because of Elizabeth and Gwyneth.”

It can be: Birmingham Six lawyer Gareth Peirce is a woman.
But then a lot of male names now seem to be female: Dana, Evelyn, Lindsay, Cameron…

“Andrea” in Italian is a man’s name. I embarrassed myself once by asking to speak to Signora Andrea X – the man on the end of the phone said “That’s me”.

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 05:04:00 +0000

I went to a Sam Taylor Wood exhibition and asked the attendant a question about “his” photos. Embarassingly, the piece in question was a self portrait.

By: jet

jet — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 15:23:04 +0000

I ran “Kieran” through several name gender recognition tools, and it isn’t even remotely female. More importantly, I ran it through a Bayes filter trained on the inflection of N. American names and Kieran even SOUNDS male.

New York Times, heh.

By: Mrs Tilton

Mrs Tilton — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 12:02:35 +0000

Yes well, Kieran, imagine the troubles you’d have had, had you been named ‘Enda’.

By: Bill

Bill — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 08:10:52 +0000

I never had any idea what gender you subscribed to, and to my surprise now, I never cared or considered it up to this point. Do I get a cookie for not imposing my gender norms on the world of ideas?

By: aaron

aaron — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 03:48:38 +0000

Didn’t mean for that to seem so insulting (to women or Kieren or his parents), but your writing in combination with feminate name have always led me to assume you were a woman. Comment was meant to be fun, highlighting how fully stereotypes can fail us.

By: aaron

aaron — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 03:41:49 +0000

Wow! I never once suspected you were a man.

By: etat

etat — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 16:39:37 +0000

I thought Vivian Bird was a woman – until I came across his photograph on a dust jacket this morning.

And the Singh family across the road have a done a bit of assimilation by calling one son Eamonn – which, when I first heard him say it, I took to be a conventional Indian name….

By: tom s.

tom s. — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 14:15:03 +0000

Kiera Nearly?

By: Rob G

Rob G — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 13:24:25 +0000

An Irish friend married a Chinese woman many years ago. Their first son was christened Liam, which a mutual Italian friend took to be a Chinese name “Lee Yum”.

But the best Irish name-play I’ve heard (probably old news to the folks here) was another Irish friend who referred to Sinead O’Connor as Shinehead.

By: KCinDC

KCinDC — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 13:06:25 +0000

At least you’re not Ciaran. Then you’d add pronunciation confusion (though I imagine Kieran isn’t immune to that either).

Presumably some people think it’s a variation of Karen.

I briefly thought Gareth was a female name, for some reason—probably because of Elizabeth and Gwyneth.

By: MaryKaye

MaryKaye — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 13:02:50 +0000

I also didn’t know whether Kieran was a male or female name. And, couldn’t be sure of your academic discipline. So I Googled you. Problem solved. An even easier solution would have been to follow the links attached to this website. You’d have thought the NY Times… Oh, well. Maybe they need to hire a Mensa affiliate to figure stuff like that out. Although a Mensa candidate would likely find my solution a little pedestrian.

By: Baptiste

Baptiste — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 06:27:12 +0000

Because my first name is ending with a “-e”, and because some think that French names with “-e”-endings are female names (such as Celine, Marie, Michelle, Danielle…), I get more than a few “Mrs”. I think that this misunderstanding might have helped the translation and publication of this article (doi:10.1300/J155v09n01_17)…

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 03:53:35 +0000

Would have been even better if you had turned out to be a woman, just one who answers the phone with an abnormally deep voice.

By: Kenny Easwaran

Kenny Easwaran — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 03:00:22 +0000

Yeah, I had thought “Kieran” was a woman’s name too, until I noticed how often commenters were using male pronouns to refer to you. I suppose I had never known a Kieran before, and maybe wanted to believe that Crooked Timber was more gender-balanced?