Morgano opened this issue on Jun 15, 2007 · 64 posts
Morgano posted Sun, 17 June 2007 at 7:43 PM
*In Britain (and maybe elsewhere) Vivian -- or Vivien -- is also a male name. Interesting how times & tastes change, eh?
*True. That is probably because it is originally French: Vivien (masculine) and Vivienne (feminine). Because English doesn't have grammatical genders (unaccountably confused with biological sexes, for the last forty years), "Vivian" was a logical anglicisation of both forms. "Vivien" as a girl's name is a little pretentious, however, and a lot daft, although I think that that was how the late Mrs. Olivier spelled her forename. There are others: Lesley and Lindsey (although female Lindseys have always heavily outnumbered male, in my experience). Names ending in "-ley", meaning "meadow", and "-sey", meaning (I am guessing) "island", look like classic English geographical names. How they became female first-names is a mystery to me.
Female Tristans, though? Ermmm, no.