When you’re introduced to a little baby Bailey, what gender do you assume? What colour jumpsuit do you buy for a little Robin? and how should you address an unknown Morgan by email? In a world where gender neutral names are becoming more popular, and the lines between traditionally male and female names are becoming blurred, Geoff Peters’ Baby Name Guesser was designed to answer these and other vexing questions.

This fun little tool helps you find names based on their gender and popularity. The interesting thing is that for the Baby Name Guesser, gender isn’t a simple binary affair. Rather, you can search for names which are relatively “more masculine” or ”more feminine” based on the statistical probabilities derived from analysing the usage of the name throughout the internet. Exactly how this works I’m not too sure, and the tool often gives some curious results; so it turns out that the gender identity of names, often isn’t as black and white as you might have thought.

It will also show you names with similar statistical profiles. For example, according to the guesser: Alexander, Anderson, Murphy and Campbell are pretty much equally masculine (and about equally popular). There are almost three times as many boys named James as there are girls (making the name about 75% male, if I’m not mistaken). Some other interesting ratios include Hayley (82.1% Female), Ashley (77% Female), Adrian (90% Male) and Morgan (69% Male). Sue remains most definitely feminine at 98%. The most gender neutral names apparently include Bailey, Page, Robin and Paul(!?), all of which have ratios approaching 1.

The big surprise for me is how many exceptions there are for traditionally gender-specific names. For example, apparently, about 1 in 6 Josephs are girls. According to Baby Name Guesser, Henrietta is the most feminine name and Yashwant the most masculine (never met a girl called Yashwant, have you?).

Which names do you feel are the most characteristically male,  female, or gender neutral?