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Yes, it stems from Latin. See Latin's case declension tables [0]

In Spanish and Portugese, -a is a feminine suffix and -o is masculine; that's where we get Patricio vs Patricia.

There are very few female names that end with -o and very few male names that end with -a in Spanish.

Another example is -ine in Joseph/Josephine. -ine/-ino/-in is a feminizing suffix in German and a diminutive in Spanish and French, that's why it's a femenine suffix in names. In English we have hero vs heroine.

[0]: https://dcc.dickinson.edu/grammar/latin/case-endings-five-de...

There are a few common Italian male names end in -a, though.

Andrea, Luca, Nicola are the most common.

Aren't most of these cases of dropping the final s and maybe a vowel from a latin names instead of adding a diminutive a?

Andreas Lucas Nicolas, etc. (perhaps with different spelling in Latin)

> Aren't most of these cases of dropping the final s

Yes, but also because those names were originally Greek.

All masculine names in Italian that end with -a come from Jews, old testament, with the exceptions of Enea and Nicola.

All three examples in GP are ancient Greek origin.

Andrea.

The '-sha' suffix is often used in short/informal versions of Russian names which might contribute to a lot of confusion since many people use the informal version of their name as formal overseas.

With the formal versions, the vowel rule is a good bet, but a lot of the informal versions for both male and female names end in 'sha' (and thus 'a').

Here's a few examples:

- Natalia: Natasha (Female)

- Aleksandr, Aleksandra: Sasha (Male/Female)

- Evgenii, Evgenia: Zhenya (Male/Female)

- Aleksei: Lyosha (Male)

- Daria: Dasha (Female)

- Oksana (Female)

- Nikita (Male)

- Yurii: Yura (Male)

- Pavel: Pasha (Male)

Keeping it terse here, the list goes on and on as you can come up with an 'a'-endng informal version of almost every male name.

Gerry is also short for Gerald sometimes.

Tony in the US is often short for Anthony.

Chris, Kris, or Cris can be short for Christina, Kristina, Kristofer, Christopher, Kristian, Kristian, Christy, Krista, or Kristi. Sometimes you'll see Crys, Chris, Krys, Kris, or Cris for Crystal/Cristal/Chrystal/Krystal.

You'll also sometimes see Christopher shortened to Topher or to Kit.

Tony is also common in the UK. Anton in parts of South Asia.

Chris can be short for Christian.

Great examples! My initial post is far too limited. It fascinates me, though, like etymology does, too.

'Antony' is also related to 'Antonius' (as is 'Italian Antonio').

One weird one (for me) from English is 'William' -> 'Bill' since there's no 'B' in 'William', and no 'W' in 'Bill'. I wonder what's happening there.

Medieval rhyming stuff. Robert -> Rob. Richard -> Dick. Edward -> Ned.

Also the G in William is silent.

I feel like you were getting dangerously close to tragedeigh there.

> Gerry is also short for Gerald sometimes. > > Tony in the US is often short for Anthony.

These two are incredibly common in the UK. You will occasionally see Ant (as in And & Dec TV presenters) but almost no one uses Anthony, they are usually all Tonys.

The female short names is usually spelt Toni, but pronounced the same.

When I was a kid, I was very confused by the names of Fleetwood Mac band members. It really threw me for a loop that they had a Lindsay who is a dude, and a Stevie who is a girl, both counter to my intuition about names.

Stevie is Stephanie which has always been very much a girl's name. Abbreviations have a tendency to collide.

> Stevie is Stephanie which has always been very much a girl's name. Abbreviations have a tendency to collide.

Maybe, I guess. That would be one of those "abbreviations" like "Peggy" ("abbreviating" Margaret) that doesn't actually abbreviate the name, and you just have to know that someone out there thinks it's related.

"Stevie" for "Steven" follows the ordinary rules of English. For "Stephanie", you'd expect "Steffie".

There was a boy in high school named Ash (he was probably class of 2002). He tried hard to not let anyone know it was short for Ashley.

Ash is a robot.

Ash is a pokemon trainer. (I watched Alien and still had to search up your comment)

I met this Australian actor in person once: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Zukerman

My classmate's older brother was named Ashley, and the story was that when he showed up at the state university he was assigned to a female dorm / floor.

I’m guessing he decidedly didn’t change it as fast as he possibly could.

And I'm a guy named Ashley who hates being called Ash. Takes all kinds.

Their parents were probably fans of American writer Margaret Mitchell's most famous novel.

Andrea, Simone, Nicola, Michele, Daniele in Italian are all male names, but English speakers would probably assume the person is female from the name alone.

True, good native and traditional cultutal exceptions of a rule of thumb. Speaking for myself (NL) we have a small amount of Italian names and heritage (also due to Catholicism), and say NYC would have much more Italian descendants.

Also, as someone who saw quite some football (non-US version), I ofcourse am familiar with a lot of names. For example, Andrea Pirlo. We also learn some via history at school, since Italy plays a prominent role in Europe's history. Regarding Nicola, people might be familiar with Nikola Tesla (the 'c' in this case, sounds like 'k') and it is just a variant of 'Nico', 'Nicole', 'Nicolas'. Then there's some dude at FIFA, 'Gianni' which is a variant of 'Jean', 'Jan', 'Jeanne', 'Janet', 'Jannie', 'Janine', etc. I could go on about Gianluigi Buffon...

What I just remind myself with regards to Italian is it tends to add a vowel at end of a word or name, but it often doesn't sound same in English or my native tongue (Dutch).

Andrea (on-dre-ah vs and-ree-ah) is a true name collision.

Michele and Daniele look like misspellings of Michelle and Danielle though. I don't know any women named Daniele or men named Danielle.

My name is Daniele (I'm from Italy), and I've been living in NY for a while. My real estate attorney name was Daniele as well (she's a woman,) it was extremely confusing at closing time.

Also, fun fact, I got invited to a ton Women in Tech stuff. I even got recruited to a company that was proud of having > 50% women in their teams. I assume that was because I was working on an OSS project (Chromium) and I had no avatar there.

Also, in the two FAANG companies I worked at I was added to women groups a few times.

> Andrea (on-dre-ah vs and-ree-ah) is a true name collision.

What do you mean? The Italian male name Andrea and the English female name Andrea aren't unrelated names that happen to be spelled the same way. They are one and the same name, both derived from the Greek word for "man"; the Italian name has managed to remember that it's overtly masculine and the English name has forgotten this.

I mean that you can look at Daniele or Danielle and guess if it's an Italian guy or an American girl. You can't do the same for Andrea.

Danièle is the French spelling of the female name. It should have an accent, but in the US those get dropped regularly.

Both are pretty rare now, but Danielle is the more common spelling. It also matches the way the -elle is used as a suffix in many diminutives (e.g., cervelle, ruelle, passerelle)

Is -elle still a living suffix in French? I was under the impression that -ette is the standard.

-elle is pretty clearly descended from one of the usual Latin diminutives (also visible in e.g. Spanish tortilla). -ette seems to come from a much rarer one?

There's a fun map on Spanish wikipedia of which diminutive forms are preferred in which parts of Spain: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Diminutivos_del_espa%C...

> Is -elle still a living suffix in French? I was under the impression that -ette is the standard.

Yes, both are used commonly. In names, there are Isabelle, Gabrielle, Cyrielle, Annabelle, Axelle, and many others. I am not sure there is any rule.

-elle is not necessary a diminutive. In theophoric names such as "Arielle", "Michelle", "Michele", "Gabriella" and "Gabrielle" it is derived from the Hebrew El, a name for God.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabrielle_(given_name)

Another commenter believes, in Romance languages, that the "-a" feminine gendered suffix is diminutive compared to "-o" masculine or neuter suffixes, but that is not true. Not for Latin, or Spanish or Italian or even Greek.

> -elle is not necessar[il]y a diminutive. In theophoric names such as "Arielle", "Michelle", "Michele", "Gabriella" and "Gabrielle" it is derived from the Hebrew El, a name for God.

(1) El isn't a name for God in Hebrew; it's just the ordinary word for any god. Like "god" in English. Conceptually close to ba'al, the ordinary word "lord".

The best-documented confusion of this kind that I know of is the Greek "Adonis" - in Greek, Adonis is a name, but even at the time it was recognized as being a Semitic loan from a word meaning "lord". We know enough about the cult of Adonis that we can identify him with a specific Semitic god, whose name was Tammuz.

(2) You're right about the etymology of these Hebrew-derived names. I think you're on shakier ground when you say that names ending in -elle are "not necessarily diminutive" in French; since the diminutive form exists, people are inevitably going to process those names as diminutives, regardless of the etymology.

They are only indirectly derived from the word "andros" = man.

They are directly derived from the feminine Greek word "andreia", meaning "courage" or "virility", which had been derived from "andros", as supposedly a quality typical for males.

It is the Italian name which has forgotten that originally it was a feminine word, not the English, which has preserved the original grammatical gender.

In Indo-European languages, most of the nouns denoting qualities have the feminine grammatical gender, so "andreia" is not an exception.

> It is the Italian name which has forgotten that originally it was a feminine word, not the English, which has preserved the original grammatical gender.

That's not really what I said. The name is a masculine name. You can name your son "virility" without problems. If you try to do that to your daughter, you're going to have problems. The grammatical gender of the word is a separate concern.

And virility literally means manliness or manhood, and by extension physical qualities ideally associated with men. Romans had another concept, virtue, for manly mental qualities. Ancient Greek "andreia" covered both aspects of manliness.

Andrea as a female name is similar to Carla or Caroline. Take a name that means something related to men (but no longer obviously so) and adjust it a bit to make it a female name. As a male name it just reflects changes in pronunciation over time.

> I don't know any women named Daniele or men named Danielle.

I wouldn’t be surprise to meet a (female) Daniele. The second L is already dropped somewhat regularly in Michelle. Which is interesting because it came from the French, but since then the French spelling drifted to "Michèle" (and then more or less fell completely out of fashion, and then seemed to come back for a while). In any case, both are pronounced exactly the same way.

"Andrea" is at its origin a feminine Greek word, but because its meaning is "courage" or "virility", in many places it became a name given to males.

Yes, I would assume those are feminine names.

The closest English male names to your examples are Andre/Andrew, Simon, Nicholas/Nick, Michael/Mike, Daniel/Dan. Gianni is John, etc

Around here, all of these would be male with the last vowel removed and female with it.

In general, English speakers seem not to be used to pronounce words that end with a non-silent letter e. Every time they pronounce my name (Daniele) like Danielle, I tell them it's Daniele (dah-NYEH-leh), and they go: dan-YELL, right? I tell them to say Daniel/Dani or anything that gets my attention. They seem to care more about the correct pronunciation of my name then I do, and then they botch it badly. :D

Many other Italian words that end with the letter E are changed to I, or mispronounced.

The one that always trips me up is when a man is a Stacey.

I had to call a customer once whose name was Courtney and it tripped me up when it turned out to be a male..

Growing up in the rural midwest, I had no idea Tracy could be a dude's name until I worked with one. (Great guy, btw.)

I learned who Tracy Morgan was from Tracy Jordan on 30 Rock. Only Tracy I know of, male or female, so it always felt masculine to me.

That's right, I forgot. It does sound feminine but not as much as Stacey to me. Nothing wrong with Stacey, just that a guy shakes your hand and we exchange names, it hits differently. Not as much as Kelly, Tracy, Robin, Bobby.

Tracy W. Bush, composer and sound designer for Warcraft <3

When I was younger, there was a couple of somewhat-distant relation who would show up occasionally to family events.

Their names were Kim, and Pinky. Kim was the wife and Pinky was the husband.

For me - men named Tracey

Ambiguous couple names are always a challenge. I indirectly know of a Tony and Dawn. Or is it Toni and Don? I can never remember which is which.

Knock three times on the ceiling if you want to find out.

IDK about the politician, but I bet 80% of the Lindsey’s out there are named after the Fleetwood Mac guitarist, so obviously that name transcend any petty gender limitations.

Also all the Stevies in the same generation.

In a similar vein, the way women's names get shortened into a plethora of variants never ceases to surprise me

Elizabeth

Eliza, Liz, Liza, Lisa, Beth, Betty

and Bess

And as memorialized in a movie and TV series, Buffy.

In the case of Elizabeth, it was likely just so common at one time that many variants were needed. Also Mary (you mightn't think there are many variants of Mary, but, for instance, Polly is a variant of Mary. Figure that one out.) At one time, pretty much every family in Ireland had at _least_ one child called Mary. Sometimes more than one. This ultimately resulted in Ireland having two consecutive presidents called Mary (and in the 2011 election, which lead to Ireland's first non-Mary president in 20 years, two of the candidates were also called Mary or variants thereof). The Marys have now largely aged out, and there were no candidates called Mary at all in the most recent election.

TIL Polly is a variant of Mary.

When I followed up on my comment about Elisabeth with Gemini, it told me that Mary/Maria is the name with the most variants

So apparently the logic is that Molly is a variant of Mary(???), and Polly rhymes with Molly.

Ends in 'a' = female: a relatively safe assumption, as far as an assumption here can be safe, with no other context. A strong majority in many places will match that. Many of the exceptions will be obviously foreign names with traditional spelling, which can go either way (may follow that culture's patterns, may not, highly varied).

Ends in vowel (sound) = female: probably mostly true, in that I strongly suspect it's >50%, but it's unreliable enough that I'd avoid trying to base any assumptions off it.

Names really follow no rules at all here. For both good and bad. E.g. most recently I ran across a "La-sia" pronounced "ladashsia". If it's spelled vat-ik'Nff and pronounced "King George" and they're female, then that's what's correct.

See https://www.reddit.com r/tragedies for all sorts of, uhh, inventive spellings and names.

> Many of the exceptions will be obviously foreign names with traditional spelling, which can go either way

Or the names of biblical prophets like Ezra or Elisha. Not very popular today but you can find a lot of them in 19th century records.

Those names were longer in their original form, so none of them ended in "-a", but in English one or more letters were dropped, resulting in the "-a" termination.

E.g. Ezra was Esdras in Greek and in Hebrew it probably ended in "-ahu", while Elisha was Eliseus in Greek and in Hebrew it ended in ayin after the "-a-".

I've actually run across more female "Ezra"s than male, but broadly yes agreed.

I mostly agree, but for example Andrea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea is a masculine name in Italian and a feminine name in Spanish. Here in Argentina it's mostly feminine, but if someone has many Italian ancestors, it may be masculine.

> It is part of the Italian male names ending in a, some others being Elia (Elias), Enea (Aeneas), Luca (Lucas), Mattia (Matthias), Nicola (Nicholas), Tobia (Tobias).

Edit: "Here in Argentina it's mostly masculine" -> "feminine"

The masculine/feminine question of the name Andrea is made weirder by the fact it literally derives from the Greek word for ‘adult male’ (andros)

More likely it is not derived directly from "andros", but from the feminine noun "andreia", which means courage or virility.

So the original grammatical gender was feminine, hence the -a termination.

> Ends in 'a' = female: a relatively safe assumption, as far as an assumption here can be safe, with no other context. A strong majority in many places will match that.

Which places? I guess I ask because your next sentence:

> Many of the exceptions will be obviously foreign names with traditional spelling

Which makes me wonder if you meant "US places", because I can think of a few male names, which maybe categorised as "foreign" if you're in the US, that end in "a".

e.g. Csaba (pronounced "Chubba") is a reasonably common Hungarian name.

And some not so "foreign" ones, albeit mostly with Biblical roots, like Joshua and Ezra.

Indo european languages mostly, probably

The names with Biblical roots did not end in -a in their original form, but in most cases their termination was "-ah". The final consonant was usually dropped in English, resulting in the "-a" termination.

Given this is a thread on a post about US names, in reply to a foreigner remarking on the difficulty of names in the US:

Yes, I was referring to places in the USA.

Lindsey (as well as Ashley, Tracy, Kelly, among others) are all, I believe, last names that became given names. They skewed female over time because they end with a vowel.

Ashley Williams is the name of two American actresses as well as two male soccer players (Welsh and Liberian) and a male boxer (also Welsh).

Don’t forget Ashley Joanna Williams

-a became the most common final letter for girls names in the U.S. only in 1936! Before that, it was -e.

> Skimming through the quick examples I came up with, one thing stands out: if it ends with an 'a', feminine. I believe this stems from Latin?

My own name, Joshua, goes against this rule. I don't think it's Latin though.

Gotta mention Lindsey Buckingham.

(Way underrated)