You’ve probably seen the posts (here, here, here, here, here, and here.) responding to the University of Florida study claiming that women’s names affect the social support or discouragement they’ll get for pursuing technical subjects. (Those with the more “feminine” names will tend to be discouraged from “manly” activities like math, although apparently a frilly name won’t hurt their performance in those activities.) Since the above-linked posts give the reasonable critiques of the research, I’m going to veer immediately to personal anecdata:
Is “Janet” a feminine name? It’s not one of those names like Alex or Chris or Dale or Pat that leaves ambiguous the gender of the person to whom it’s attached, but neither is it a name you’d expect attached to a Disney princess. In any case, my middle name (Douglas) is a family surname which happens also to be a pretty common masculine given name … which, possibly, my parents gave me so I’d have the option of submitting school or job applications or scientific papers as J. Douglas Stemwedel. At least way back in the last millennium when I was being named, it wasn’t crazy to think that whether your accomplishments or skills were taken seriously at all might depends on what the name attached to them communicated about your gender.
For most of my early schooling, I was a Janet in a sea of Jennifers. (Four Jennifers in a class of less than 20 kids — and at least once a day, I’d be called “Jennifer” by mistake.) In some ways, that shaped my social interactions with classmates and teachers — I was working hard to underline my status as not-Jennifer. I probably overshot, given that I ended up fairly alienated from most of the other girls during grade school (and that the teachers seemed not to know what to make of me). In retrospect, that worked out fine, because when the “cool girls aren’t braniacs” pressure came on in junior high, the girls enforcing it didn’t have any hold on me. (Their names, by the way, ran the gamut from frou-frou to ambisexual, and they didn’t seem to be running name-checks first before applying the judgment of the mob.)
I’m guessing a certain level of obliviousness of or disdain for the opinions of others can be a useful life skill. Certainly, it can help keep people’s reactions to your name from locking you into a particular pathway.
My kids are girls. Both ended up with clear girl-names (although not, to my ear, girly names). Each so far seems set on being who she wants to be regardless of the tastes of parents, peers, or sister. No doubt, when they’re older, each will choose her own preferred nickname. (Most frequently, I call ’em by their first initials. Also, I do the mom thing of calling them by their sibling’s name or first initial. I get distracted.)
However it works out, I hope we can raise them to understand that messing with societal expectations is a good thing. Of course, if their generation does it well enough, their kids might not have quite so many societal expectations to mess with.
Interesting that you should mention the overabundance of Jennifers. I think we’re in more or less the same age cohort (I was born in 1970), and in my grade school class Jennifers were everywhere. It must have been the fashionable female name from about ’68-’72.
Janette M Burns, DuBois, 1959 – 1975, professor of speech communication at Penn State’s DuBois campus,
As a Janet, you might get a kick out of this. Janette M Burns, professor of speech communication at Penn State’s DuBois campus, 1959-1975, was named Janette by her mother. The name was pronounced ‘Janet’, but the spelling was different because they were Scottish Protestant and didn’t want her to be mistaken for Irish Catholic.
Parents are the cwaziest people. (That is a very old reference, quite hoary.)
I thought Jennifers were popular in the 80s; I was born in 82 and I swear my classes were always filled with Jennifers. Luckily its hard to mix up Meera with Jennifer 😉
I’ve heard “Love Story” blamed by many Jennifers for all the Jennifers.
To follow up, using a href=http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/ it was the most popular baby name from 1970 to 1984.
Funny that you should bring up naming, this was a big issue when I was pregnant.
My husband (with an unusual first name) and I (called by my middle name throughout childhood), when confronted by the fact that I was having twin boys, put together some rules for naming the kiddos – no “creative” spelling, no names of people we couldn’t stand (even middle names), no family conventions (II, III, Junior), and no strings of initials that spelled out silly stuff.
We both had spent many traumatic (well, to hear him talk about it) years dealing with our personal oddities re. names and really didn’t want our kids to deal with that on top of anything else they’d have to be stuck with!
Seems to have worked well, they have only been stuck in classes with “same named” kids this year, when we had two Patricks in one 5th-grade class.
The interesting issue for me is that all my publications as a professional scientist used my first initial followed by my middle name, and with an ambiguous middle name I sometimes get folks acting surprised by my gender when we meet. Hmmm….guess I sounded too male in my manuscripts?
Anecdata for you: Two Janets that I went to school with (about 10 years before your cohort). Both were bookwormish and sciencey; very nice people whose parents were professional class. Not much in the HS primping sense, but quality, solid work ethic that extended to math and science. They also had aptitude for social sciences.
Maybe the professional class parents knew something about names that motivate.
Science writing tends towards the ‘male’ end of the style spectrum, at least according to popular standards for what women’s and men’s common writing styles are supposed to be. Lots of impersonal description, few feelings or personal relationships.
Well, we did not agonize over rules for naming, psychological impairment due to moniker, etc. in naming you, only that it had to be short enough and strong enough to go with the last name.
As you arrived a girl-baby, we took our best shot naming you after your maternal grandmother and (only) paternal aunt. It seemed like the obvious solution. [The middle name was because your grandmother always wished she had been named after that grandmother of hers.]
Since you were the only girl-baby in the brood, I think we got maximum bang-for-buck, so to speak.
[BTW, we didn’t name him “Fishy”; the nieces did that for his love of fish in all forms (aquarium, stream or platter).]