Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun: Hen

[iverglas]

26. chuckles

In last week's Toronto Star that I happened to get around to reading today before it went to the recycle. The columnist reports that her 19-yr-old son at university has six friends named Ben.

http://www.thestar.com/living/article/1155850--baby-names-parents-named-peter-and-susan-have-spawned-a-generatino-of-bens-and-emilies

... The list of this year’s most popular names for girls and boys as compiled by names.family education.com/nametracker confirms this. In the top 10 for girls are Madison, Chloe, Olivia and, yes, Emily. The most popular names for boys are Ethan, Jayden, Aiden — and holding strong at No. 1, Jacob. It is interesting how children’s names are so reflective of each generation’s tastes. Naming is an act that at its very essence is intended for posterity. As a Karen, who has not once encountered anyone younger than me with the same first name, I know first-hand that the opposite is true. Names are very much a product of their time.

Snork.

The trend I was getting at for girls was to give them surnames as names, I guess, surnames being pretty much by-definition masculine nouns. It just seems to somehow give a girl some value-added to have a male name. Yeah, popular entertainment is full of them. Madison, Addison, ...