Name gender (mis)association?

Although this is about my SL character, it didn't seem SL enough for General, so...

Does anybody know any girls named Karsten? To me, it doesn't sound feminine at all. Not that I would mind if it did, but it seems to be clearly a male name to me, yet on a nearly daily basis I talk to people in IM or on the forum who see 'Karsten Rutledge' and go 'hey its a grrl .' Out of curiosity, I made a female avatar recently and talked to random people I'd never met before, and nobody questioned a girl being named Karsten. Almost all of the name databases I've looked at list Karsten as being a male greek name, but I did find one that claimed it was unisex.

On a broader sense, what makes a name male or female? When you see a name, what indicators do you use to decide whether it's a guy or girl? Do you get mistaken for the opposite gender a lot?

As to your actually question, I'm way too tired to think about stuff like that right now. However, to your comments on your name... It kinda sounds like kirstin or something, which I've heard as a female name.

The aforementioned similarity to 'Kirsten' is probably why a lot of folks were assuming it was a female name... I would probably have assumed male, because it reminds me more of 'Carson'.

And there don't seem to be any real hard-and-fast rules about gender-specific naming... a safe bet is on how 'soft' the name sounds, though. 'Beth' 'Sissy' 'Susan' 'Lisa' etc, are all 'softer' sounding than 'Matt', 'Eric', 'Kevin', 'Brad', etc. Male names, particularly diminutives, tend to be more clipped and harsh sounding. There's a growing trend toward non-gender-specific names, though, like 'Hunter', and there have been names that can go either way for quite some time, like 'Alex'.

I thought you were a potato chip. For some reason your name reminds me of potato chips.

I'm with Elspeth.

Name "hardness" and sometimes "cuteness" will determine our first guess as to gender. This has to be adjusted for the suspected nationality of the name. It also is adjusted based on the suspected origin of the name.

Now the less the person is exposed to history, international news, movies with non-American characters, and other languages the worse the guesses get. My guesses are usually correct (as in your case) because of my exposure to many names from different countries (see www.behindthename.com).

I singled out American characters above because American movies and TV shows are seen worldwide and thus knowledge of American naming conventions will be almost a given.

Surprisingly on another message board (in my country) there were a few (very few) who couldn't tell my gender from my alias, which was also Aodhan.

As someone who knows him very, very well, I can assure you that you are completely correct. He is, in fact, a potato chip.

Oh no! My secret is out! I'm actually a potato chip masquerading as a pony.

plz dun eet meh

I thought it was because Milo made a girl avatar and you wanted to prove you could make a prettier one? (Which you evidently could, Milo is a hideous girl.)

An adorable pony, though. I was very tempted to eat you until you put on that adorable facade. If I ate you, I wouldn't have any cute pony to prance around with. AND THEN WHAT WOULD I DO?

No, I said before he did that that I should make a girl av because I'm always mistaken for one anyway. He is ugly though, yeah.

Additionally, I found a family portrait:



That's me on the right, Ma on the left, and Uncle Bob on top.

Uncle Bob is looking quite tasty. Who's the rest of them, did Ma sleep with Uncle Bob again? Someone needs to tell them about potato chip condoms.

My favorite is Jean Benet being a girl's name. If it really was French, not just a nouveau riche attempt at class that failed miserably it would have been Jeanne Benette.

But in English, sometimes you can't tell. There are men named Kim and women named Kim. But only men named Tim. Or Jim.

If your name is Joan and you are from Barcelona you are a man, if you're from Tulsa you're a woman.

I'm a 'she' all the time. To be fair, there are women with my first name (including an actress) but a vast majority of Kristians are males. Unfortunately, they're in Scandinavia and not playing SL.

Whelp I will have to admit I thought you were a girl who just misspelled Kirsten.
Blimey, googling karsten actually does yield a bunch of males on that image search thingy...


Well...
In soviet portugal, comrade, most masculine nouns end in O while feminine nouns usually end in A. Notable exceptions are, of course, words from other languages. Since you live in a melting pot culture, it gets a bit crazy

I am fed up with people referring to my decidedly feminine avatar as a guy just cuz Kris Kristofferson has a girlie name!

Shut up, Christopher

Actually Kris is a shortening of KrispyFriedDuck. Issat a male or female sounding name?

<--- Knows a Karsten in RL and she's beautiful.

That would depend on how the duck's weight compares to that of a witch.

With SL and America being such melting pots, I would say the main basis I have for guessing the gender of a name is just who I've run across in the past with a similar name. I'd agree with the sentiment that male names in general have a "harder" sound to them. The ones in between are trickier.

Funny note on my own - I knew a male Ananda in school, and the most famous historical Ananda was a man - a disciple of Buddha. But most people named Ananda these days are female. But then being ambiguous about it while still having a real-sounding name was deliberate in my case.

I have known a girl named Karsten. In fact, I have never heard of it being anything except a girls name. I always assumed it was a variation on Carsen.

Well, in English it's not so obvious whether a name is male or female. But in languages like Spanish and Italian it's pretty easy. Ends in a, girl. Ends in o, boy.

My name is so non-standard that I get mistaken for a man all the time when they are not standing face to face with my female AV. (It's actually a randomly generated name from when I used to play SWG. It was my very first AV name, and I kept it out of sentiment.)

Karsten does strike me as a female name, mostly due to its similarity to such names as Kirsten, Christie, etc. That and the fact it's a name I had never seen in that form before.

I'm told "Geepa" is a female name in India, and I get confused for female sometimes. (Having female avatars does tend to encourage this notion as well, but I do have a number of guy avatars as well.)

Noone notices that Richie is amale name either. they still hit on me...

The only Karsten I've ever known was male.

(The only other Jopsy I've seen anywhere was female, short for Josephine I believe.)

And folks used to get me mixed up with Jopey Weber and assumed I was female a bit more often than I liked.

I know of several Karstens (surname - North German, Dutch, and Scandinavian (chiefly Denmark): from the personal name Carsten, a variant of Christian.) here in Minnesota (http://www.ancestry.com/search/SurnamePage.aspx?html=b&ln=Karstens&sourcecode=13304). I went to school with some as a kid, but never have seen it as a first name.

Funnily enough, I graduated High School with a Kris Karstens (female).

My RL name is Chris(topher) - named for my great-uncle Christie (female sounding variant if I ever heard one), and most Kris's I know of are female, though I have known a few males who have it spelled Kris. (let's not forget Kris Kringle)

To answer the OP, I think Karsten sounds more female than male. Probably due to the "sten" ending.