There are many places in my book where I change names to protect the innocent (or guilty), or where I am just telling a made-up story and need a character name.
I’ve been going through my list of gender-neutral names, in an attempt to let readers indulge their own stereotypes instead of my own, when I realized with a shock that all the names are American names, typically of the white, middle-class, variety. There wasn’t a Vinod or Hiroki or Sjooki among them. I’d like to fix that!
If you know any, could you share with me some names from different cultures, languages, and ethnicities? Please let me know the name and the ethnicity/language it comes from, plus what gender the name is. Gender-neutral names preferred but not necessary. Thank you!!
Sanne: Belgium, neutral
Nia = purpose in Swahili
I’m not home to double check the spelling on this, but I had a friend from Africa named Myna. It is swahili (sp?) means “bird”. Is used for male and female. Always loved it.
As for Russian names, there are only two I know that are Gender-neutral: Sasha and Zhenya, in their short-name variant.
Some other names you can find there:
http://www.foreigndocuments.com/russian_names.html
In English, Pat, Ashley, and Leslie used to be masculine, may be rather gender neutral in the American South, but now probably lean towards the feminine in most other places.
Maria is a female name and covers most southern European and south American ethnicities. For male Jose falls into the same category same spelling different pronunciation in different cultures of roman languages. Nuno, Artur, Bruno are male names from Portuguese though may appear in other ethnicities as well. Some other female options are Catarina and Natercia. I can’t think of any non-gender specific.
Try these sites for ideas: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GenderBlenderName
http://www.babynames1000.com/gender-neutral/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisex_names
When I tell stories on stage I always use Susie… She is my regular comedic foil…
As far as neutral… Ethnic…
Sasha?
You have Claude in France that suits boys and girls. Sacha is a Russian nickname for both alexander and Alexandra. In French, Cecile is for girls. …If anything comes back to mind, I’ll lt you know!
Hi,
Andrea is a name used for male in italian, and for female in spanish.
from northern germany the name EIKE can be used either for a girl or a boy. we have named our son eike (born three months ago), and the name is more used for boys than girls, but funnily our midwife’s sister is called eike, too.
Dominic/Dominique is gender neutral and works in a lot of countries.
And Kit is a very, very, very popular name for chinese boys (and it means something like “unique” or “outstanding”, I don’t remember).
Other unisex names in chinese that I can think of: Bo and Cheng or Chang.
Also the name “Kim” is a very common guys name in swedish…
Jisung Is common name in South Korea and Sun is common name too. And also it’s neutral.
All the names you could ever want and more: I googled “Russian Baby Names.” The first site was http://www.BabyNamesCountry.com, which has tons and tons and tons.
I imagine you’ll want names that are recognizable (as names) and pronounceable for your target audience, but there’s plenty to pick from.
I took this info from the “Behind the Name” website. My name is Tia and I was born in 1957. I wanted to find different meanings for my name since I was tired of people telling me that it meant “aunt” in the Spanish language. I’d read this info before in books. It was nice to see it confirmed.
“I named my daughter Tia after my friend who’s name is Tia and she was born in 1947. She was given the name Tia as a nickname for Patricia, her grandmother who was of Celtic origin. I did some research on the name Tia and read that it is of Greek, Egyptian and Hebrew origin. Yes, it also a Spanish language meaning for Aunt, albeit is of Greek, Egyptian and Hebrew origin.
The Egyptian origin sites say King Ramses sister was named Tia and the name means princess.
The Hebrew origin reads that Tia was a nickname for the name Tamara who was the daughter-in-law of Judah. Tia was also a nickname for Tamar who was the daughter of David.
From the Greek origin Tia means Goddess or Godly. Tia was an abbreviation for names like Althea and Dorothea. The Mythological Thea was the Greek Goddess of Light, Mother of the Sun, Moon and Dawn. Therefore, the name Tia dates back to ancient times.”
Some generic Indian names include Vijay, Arvind, Raj, Venkatesh, Dilip for males and Kavita, Vidya, Aarti, Laxmi/Lakshmi for females.
Gender neutral names are not that common, but some are: Kiran, Suman.
- JT