Comments on: Getting the names straight

By: Corinne McKay

Corinne McKay — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:24:08 +0000

Thanks to everyone for your comments, it’s great to see that we all struggle with this to one extent or another! The babynology website is a big help and one that I had never seen before. Also MT is completely correct that one of the stumbling blocks is names that change gender depending on the country (a colleague told me that his wife Rosario is routinely called “he” in Italy). Judy, your example of “When will Dana Sanchez be back?” perfectly encapsulates the issue!

Marie-Louise, you pointed out another crucial issue with names; I have a few French colleagues whose pet peeve is having the accents in their names omitted, because the word would be pronounced completely differently in French without them.

By: Marie-Louise

Marie-Louise — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:14:48 +0000

Oh, and please, keep the hyphens where they belong and do not amputate my name: I’m “Marie-Louise”, I’m not a “Marie” who feels like stating her middle name in a weird way.

Thanks for the post.

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 10:14:09 +0000

Great article. One needs to be careful about names which appear in more than one language. The babynology.com site is great but you need to know the cultural background of the person too. Andrea and Nicola, for example, are usually female in the US but usually male in Italy. I say usually because Italian parents, let’s say, might move to the US and might call their son Andrea.

Although it’s always a 50-50 call, I agree with Corinne that you can’t afford to make a bad first impression. I tend to admit my ignorance and ask. It often works to break the ice and I find that most people are genuinely pleased that this was considered.

By: Janine

Janine — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:02:34 +0000

I use this site before responding to emails when I’m not sure of the person’s gender:

http://www.babynology.com

You can check over 100,000 names from all over the world. It has been very helpful.

By: MT

MT — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 04:41:50 +0000

Great suggestions.

One thing that has worked well for me when you don’t know someone’s gender or preferred title is, just ask! I’m not sure why people dance around the issue, but people with gender-ambiguous names have really appreciated me just admitting whatever ignorance I am suffering from and asking what they prefer–and then I’m sure to get it exactly right from then on. I always get a reply that begins, “Thanks so much for asking.”

One thing to watch out for with Chinese names, too, is that the family name comes first, unless the order has been Westernized, so it’s good to check both on the person’s preference and/or on the copy editor’s preference for your material. For example, Mao Zedong’s given name was Zedong, and his family name was Mao. This naming order happens also to be true for Hungarian names (and I’m sure many others).

By: Judy Jenner

Judy Jenner — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 03:14:18 +0000

Those are great points, Corinne! I especially like the gender comments. As a non-native English speaker, I have always been very confused that certain names that to me are clearly male or female can be used for both genders. Now that I have know this for a few years, I am mortified to call anyone on the phone who has sent me an e-mail and is named Dana, Shannon, Kelly (Who knew? I didn’t — until I had a female colleague married to a Kelly. I thought this was two girls. Luckily, my colleague used a pronoun when talking about her husband, whew.)

I have tried to work around the gender issue by calling and saying “Is Dana Sanchez in?”. When the answer is no, I’d have to use the pronoun in the next sentence, but to avoid that, I end up sounding stupid and say “When will Dana Sanchez be back?” — because I can’t say Mr. or Mrs. either because I don’t know! Interesting dilemma. Does anyone have a clever way of working around it?