Talk:High School Story: Class Act/@comment-34379778-20180920182107/@comment-3452092-20180920204830

Names, at least in English speaking countries, tend to go through cycles. I can't speak for countries that speak languages other than English, because I have not studied them at all. I'll get there, but I'm stil working on English ones for now and have a long way to go.

For example, there are names that used to be exclusively male that have switched to exclusively, or almost exclusively female. I think I've found one name that went the other direction which is Douglas if I recall correctly. So here's a few examples of names that have switched from male to female (or which used to be both and now are exclusively female): Whitney, Ashley, Hillary, Beverly, Marion, Vivien, Meredith, Lindsay, Carol, Lauren (I think it was short for Laurence? And I think it still shows up sometimes for boys).

I've actually had great fun with these kinds of names in my writing. I have a boy names Ashley in one story who goes by Ash. I also have a group of siblings whose father was named Meredith.

Some of the names on there such as Alex are generally nicknames. Alex may be gender neutral, but Alexander and Alexandra are not (Alexis is though). Jesse is not usually the spelling for girls, Jessie being much more common (and often being a nickname for Jessica, but not always), but all of the "Jessie"s in my own family are male (a great-grandfather and the two grandsons who were named after him).

@Andisimon - So in your country how do they decide if a name is male or female especially if a new name is introduced? Is it the first use of the name deturmines it? As I hinted at above, I kind of study names to some degree (mostly to help me with naming characters) and I am interested to understand how that works for your country.