Best Baby Names for Girls

When it comes to naming your daughters, choosing a more masculine-sounding name can help her advance her career. At least if she’s going to be a lawyer.

According to an article published in the Vancouver Sun, “females with masculine names fare far better in legal careers than females with feminine names.” The article points toward research that studied women attorneys (a more male-dominated field) and compared salaries and potential for career advancement to becoming a judge.

This study suggests that if Sue (a traditionally female name) changes her name to Kelly (a more gender-neutral name)  she improves her chances of becoming a judge by 5%. However, if Sue takes a big leap and changes her name to Cameron (a more predominately male name) she has now tripled her chances of hearing the words, “Your Honor.”

Even when they accounted for family wealth, age and experience, they still found that a “statistically significant wage gap existed in favor of female attorneys with masculine names.”

Bentley Coffey, an economist at Clemson University in South Carolina said this in explaining the results, “When we see a masculine name, something in our subconscious is cued. There seems to be a subtle sexist notion, even if it’s not gender discrimination per se.” That’s interesting, but wait a minute. What kind of name is Bentley? And what about people like Hillary Clinton? Hillary is a rather feminine-sounding name and she’s an attorney that seems to have advanced her career quite nicely. Well, of course, we know in research these things happen; they’re called outliers. Malcolm Gladwell even wrote a book on it.

Coffey himself is convinced of the outcomes of this study and as a result he and his wife named their daughter Collins. Beyond the legal field, the article points out that author J.K. Rowling opted for her initials on her books rather than her name (Joanne) to help increase readership among boys. Female scientists have been known to do the same thing – they sometimes use their initials on papers to avoid an overtly feminine-sounding name.

Of course we could discuss the larger societal need to address sexism, but that could take awhile. In the meantime, the best baby names for girls should have some gender-neutrality to them…at least if you want them to grow up to be judges.