(no subject)

[katrijn.livejournal.com]

I was searching for androgynous names and I found , an article about (you guessed it) androgynous names. The main thrust is that androgynous naming hasn't increased, and androgynous names usually settle out into one or the other.

I found this excerpt especially interesting:

"To some degree the androgyny is appealing," says Lieberson. "But this can also give it a negative value for their sons and a positive value for their daughters." The researchers explain this asymmetry using the well-known sociological concept of status contamination: "The advantaged have a greater incentive to avoid having their status confused with the disadvantaged," they write. If boys (like whites) are relatively advantaged compared with girls (or blacks), these privileged groups will systematically "leave the neighborhood" when customary markers of status disappear--as they do when names lose their sexual specificity.