Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds were hardly the first parents to use a traditionally "boy" name for a girl when they named their baby daughter James. But they helped popularize a trend that includes Jessica Simpson's daughter Maxwell, Mark Zuckerberg's baby girl August, and Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis's little girl Wyatt.
Thousands of American baby girls were given boys' names, or names closely associated with male figures, last year. We're not talking about gender-neutral names such as Riley and Robin, Blue or North that work equally well for children of both sexes. We're talking about the female equivalent to naming a boy Sue.
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So why is it OK, even fashionable and attractive to name a girl James but not to name a boy Jane or Sue? Why indeed, say some. Where some believe that naming your daughter Ezra or Declan is a feminist act, others claim it's actually sexist, given that it's hardly considered cool or cute to give traditionally female names — Elizabeth, say, or Maeve — to boys.
Love the practice or hate it, boys' names are being given in ever-greater numbers to girls every year. We combed the Social Security lists to find male names that rank below the Top 1000 but were given to at least 20 baby girls in 2017. Below are the statistics for the top 25 traditionally male names given to girls in 2017, with the number representing how many girls received that name.