Query Details

Query Subject:	Feminine names ending in "-a"
Author:	Kentaro Toyama
Submitter Email:	click here to access email

Linguistic LingField(s):	Historical Linguistics Linguistic Theories Phonetics Semantics

Query:	Does anyone know of any studies done on the frequency of female names ending in ''-a''? Personal observation has led me to believe that there is a universal tendency for female names to end in ''-a''. This is easily confirmed for names in English or any of the Romance languages: The 1990 US census ( http://www.census.gov/genealogy/names ) shows that a full 41% of female names end in ''-a'' (contributing to 31% of the female population) versus 1% and 0.6% for male names (of which, many appear to be female names perhaps adopted by transgender men). I believe that this trend might also hold for other languages, though perhaps to a lesser degree. I am also interested in any reasonable explanations for this phenomenon -- the most obvious is that languages with noun genders frequently use ''-a'' to indicate feminine nouns, but this only begs the question for why THAT might be so. Any leads would be greatly appreciated! Kentaro Toyama
LL Issue:	11.186
Date posted:	29-Jan-2000
Back

Sums main page

New from Cambridge University Press!