Name Genderizer

Live Demo

How it works

The first step is parsing the input name, identifying the name parts and assessing the person’s culture. Understanding the person’s name is key to identifying the gender. Then it becomes obvious which name parts to look at. It’s not always the “first name”.

Large dictionaries and statistical data sources relevant for the culture, such as census and birth lists, among others, are used to compute the result.

Challenges

Our world has diverse naming systems. While the given name often expresses gender, in some cultures surnames do, or middle names.

1. Unisex names

For example “Casey”. 

Most cultures have an amount of unisex names, and in some cultures it’s rather the norm.

This is also the case for many short forms or pet names, which can derive from given names with different gender:

Alex  => Alexandra, Alexander
Charlie  =>  Charlotte, Charles

2. Ambiguous names

Names that exist in multiple cultures, sometimes having completely different roots, and being used for opposite genders, for example “Andrea”.

In this case, identifying the culture is the key:

Andrea Bocelli => Italian => likely male
Andrea Berg => German => likely female

3. Lost detail

Detail is lost through transcription (or ASCIIfication), rendering distinctive names the same.

4. Misspellings

Sometimes a misspelling can be linked to the actual name with high confidence, other times contradicting options are viable.

5. Name order

Besides the challenges with individual names, there are ambiguous situations with varying name order.

Use Cases