Names That Switched Gender
Ashley was a boys’ name. So were Taylor, Madison, Leslie and Shannon. These are the 61 names in 146 years of U.S. records whose sex association actually reversed — not names that lean one way, names that changed sides.
The rare direction, and worth reading carefully: several of these reflect a Spanish, Catalan or French masculine name arriving in the U.S. rather than an English name changing sides.
| Save name | Name & meaning | History 1926–2025, yearly counts; individually scaled | Babies 2025 · rank | 5-year rank movement | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ruler of the world | 89#1,796 | Up 20 rank positions in five years | 1952 | ||
Gift of God in the Theodore family; bold people in the Theobald family | 3,945#82 | Up 90 rank positions in five years | 2023 | ||
Yahweh is gracious, through John | 176#1,172 | Up 248 rank positions in five years | 1993 | ||
God is gracious, through the John name family | 47#2,731 | Down 675 rank positions in five years | 1954 | ||
Bright fame | 69#2,122 | Down 105 rank positions in five years | 1963 | ||
Variant of Tristan; meaning uncertain | 116#1,512 | Down 663 rank positions in five years | 1996 | ||
Greek Lord; also a modern invented name | 1,416#244 | Down 20 rank positions in five years | 2017 | ||
Short form of Gerald, Gerard, or Geraldine | 8#9,182 | Down 3,860 rank positions in five years | 1958 | ||
Yahweh is gracious, through John | 232#987 | Up 148 rank positions in five years | 2025 |
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Names marked *
- Joan — Mostly Spanish and Catalan masculine Joan arriving in the US, not the English name changing sides.
- Jean — Largely French and Spanish masculine Jean/Juan, alongside the English feminine Jean fading.
How a name qualifies
The birth data records each name separately for girls and for boys, so a name’s girls’ share in any year is simply the girls’ count divided by both. A name makes this list when that share started on one side of 50%, ended on the other, and moved at least 50 points in between — measured over 10-year windows at each end so a single noisy year can’t qualify a name. It also needs 20K uses overall.
“Crossed” is the year the five-year rolling share passed 50%, so treat it as approximate. Because a name is only published for a sex in years it reached five applications, a share of 0% means “recorded below the publication floor”, not zero babies.
The share is a ratio of two counts from the same year, so unlike most statistics on this site it needs no adjustment for the fact that far more babies were born in 1960 than in 1890.