Gender in AI Language Models: What's In a Name?

If you're feeling fluid and want your name to reflect that, here's a list of gender-neutral names¹.

Many of these names, comparing the historical gender split to 2021, seem to be on the way to becoming more strongly gendered. I would be surprised if Kendall doesn't continue to shift towards girls as all of Kendall Jenner's namesakes grow up. Because of the seeming taboo against boys taking girls names, it's hard to imagine a squad of boy Taylors or Kendalls reversing those trends.

Jackie is an interesting case study, as it's one of the only names that's gone from majority-male around 1940 to majority-female around 1960 to an even split in the present day. Jackie Kennedy, Jackie Robinson, and Jackie Chan are just a few famous bearers of the name, and it seems to be in a relatively stable equilibrium right now.

To exclude some of the edge cases we dicussed earlier, like Kim being thought of as gender-neutral due to what I'd guess are mixed signals from its use as a last name, here we limit to names with an actual gender ratio of between 20 to 80% female.↩


Name	Girls	Boys	% Girls	% Girls 2021	RoBERTa % Female
Name Skyler	Girls 25744	Boys 40372	% Girls 38.94	% Girls 2021 58.92	RoBERTa % Female 50.33
Name Shay	Girls 7272	Boys 4656	% Girls 60.97	% Girls 2021 73.15	RoBERTa % Female 49.38
Name Marlo	Girls 6813	Boys 3298	% Girls 67.38	% Girls 2021 56.04	RoBERTa % Female 49.36
Name Jody	Girls 55775	Boys 31383	% Girls 63.99	% Girls 2021 32.35	RoBERTa % Female 48.69
Name Camdyn	Girls 2568	Boys 3433	% Girls 42.79	% Girls 2021 36.67	RoBERTa % Female 48.63
Name Lynn	Girls 182148	Boys 52327	% Girls 77.68	% Girls 2021 75.28	RoBERTa % Female 51.87
Name Laverne	Girls 42869	Boys 13217	% Girls 76.43	% Girls 2021 0	RoBERTa % Female 47.7
Name Sammie	Girls 7713	Boys 20758	% Girls 27.09	% Girls 2021 70.97	RoBERTa % Female 52.44
Name Baby	Girls 5974	Boys 6203	% Girls 49.06	% Girls 2021 53.57	RoBERTa % Female 46.99
Name Taylor	Girls 325832	Boys 111763	% Girls 74.46	% Girls 2021 78.25	RoBERTa % Female 46.72

If you're feeling fluid and want your name to reflect that, here's a list of gender-neutral names¹.

To exclude some of the edge cases we dicussed earlier, like Kim being thought of as gender-neutral due to what I'd guess are mixed signals from its use as a last name, here we limit to names with an actual gender ratio of between 20 to 80% female.↩


Name	Girls	Boys	% Girls	% Girls 2021	RoBERTa % Female
Name Skyler	Girls 25744	Boys 40372	% Girls 38.94	% Girls 2021 58.92	RoBERTa % Female 50.33
Name Shay	Girls 7272	Boys 4656	% Girls 60.97	% Girls 2021 73.15	RoBERTa % Female 49.38
Name Marlo	Girls 6813	Boys 3298	% Girls 67.38	% Girls 2021 56.04	RoBERTa % Female 49.36
Name Jody	Girls 55775	Boys 31383	% Girls 63.99	% Girls 2021 32.35	RoBERTa % Female 48.69
Name Camdyn	Girls 2568	Boys 3433	% Girls 42.79	% Girls 2021 36.67	RoBERTa % Female 48.63
Name Lynn	Girls 182148	Boys 52327	% Girls 77.68	% Girls 2021 75.28	RoBERTa % Female 51.87
Name Laverne	Girls 42869	Boys 13217	% Girls 76.43	% Girls 2021 0	RoBERTa % Female 47.7
Name Sammie	Girls 7713	Boys 20758	% Girls 27.09	% Girls 2021 70.97	RoBERTa % Female 52.44
Name Baby	Girls 5974	Boys 6203	% Girls 49.06	% Girls 2021 53.57	RoBERTa % Female 46.99
Name Taylor	Girls 325832	Boys 111763	% Girls 74.46	% Girls 2021 78.25	RoBERTa % Female 46.72