LINGUIST List 11.352

Fri Feb 18 2000

Sum: Feminine Names Ending in "-a"

Editor for this issue: Naomi Ogasawara <naomilinguistlist.org>

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  • Kentaro Toyama, for Query 11.186 Feminine names ending in '-a'

    Message 1: for Query 11.186 Feminine names ending in '-a'

     Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 20:20:04 -0800
    From: Kentaro Toyama <kentoymicrosoft.com>
    Subject: for Query 11.186 Feminine names ending in '-a'


    Summary of responses for "feminine names ending in -a":

    Thanks to everyone who responded! Sorry for the delay; there was a lot of material.

    - ------------------------------------------------------- Many people CONFIRMED the "-a" suffix hypothesis in various languages:

    - Anne Cutler cites two papers which appear support the "-a" ending inclination for English names in this century. Both papers enumerate a series of other gender biases in names and make for very interesting reading in themselves. The Cutler paper, in particular comes close to an explanation for phonetic gender bias, which I summarize below. (Cutler, A., McQueen, J.M. & Robinson, K. (1990). Elizabeth and John: Sound patterns of men's and women's names. Journal of Linguistics, 26, 471-482. Cassidy, K, Kelly, M & Sharoni, L. (1999) Inferring gender from name phonology J. Exp Psych: General, 128, 1-20.)

    - Slavic languages almost always have female names ending in "-a" (Lucja Biel, J.P.Kirchner,Larisa Zlatic, Ursula Doleschal, Robert Orr, John Davis) - Biel pointed out that on a list of 309 Polish names (source: a now-defunct web page), only 8 did not end in "-a", and these were all of non-Polish origin. - Kirchner noted further that Slavic languages add the "-a" when the name in the language of origin lacks it (Yvette -> Iveta, in Czech). - Zlatic notes that in Serbo-Croation, female names not ending in "-a" behave as undeclined nouns (Wechsler, Stephen and Larisa Zlatic(1999). Syntax and Morphological Realization in Serbo-Croatian. In Slavic in HPSG, edited by R. Borsley and A. Przepiorkowski, Stanford, CSLI Publications.)

    - Danon mentions that "-a" is the standard feminine marker for Hebrew.

    - John Davis mentions that new African-American names often end in "-a".

    - Many respondents pushed the "-a" ending roots back to Latin and further back to Proto-Indo-European (John E. Koontz, Karl Reinhardt, Gabi Danon, Robert Orr, John Davis, James L. Fidelholtz). - Koontz notes that the "-a" ending for female names is common throughout Proto-Indo-European descendants. He doubts that this tendency exists outside of IE, listing Semitic, Berber, Japanese, Siouan, Hidatsa, Omaha, as exceptions, many of which use a non"-a" suffix explicitly denoting "girl" or "woman" to indicate gender.

    - ------------------------------------------------------- ... which leads us to the many interesting COUNTEREXAMPLES for female names not ending in "-a":

    - In Hindi, "-a" is for males, and "-i" for females (Elizabeth Pyatt, Lameen Souag).

    - In Japanese, -o (or -ko) ends most female names (Elizabeth Pyatt, Earl Herrick, John Davis). As Herrick notes, there are many male names that end in "-a" (Akira, Hidetaka, etc.). Being Japanese, I can confirm that this is the case; however, let me also note that there is still a faint preference for female names ending in "-a" for those names which do not end in "-ko" (Mina, Haruna, Nana, Risa). Alas, "-e" and "-i" are also frequent, but "-u" is almost unheard of.

    - In Afro-Asiatic languages (Egyptian, Aramaic(?) Semitic(?)), "-t" often ends female names (Elizabeth Pyatt, Lameen Souag, John E. Koontz).

    - Celtic names frequently do not end in "-a" (Dorcas, Caris) (John Davis).

    - Old Norse appears to have many female names without "-a" (Liz Evans).

    - ------------------------------------------------------- Here are some COUNTEREXAMPLES for male names ending in "-a":

    - Early American male names from the Bible (Elisha, Jededia, ...) often ended in "-a" (John Davis).

    - Irish male names often end in "-a" (Barra, Donncha, Murcha...) (Roslyn Blyn-LaDrew). Blyn-LaDrew notes that most nouns ending in "-a" are masculine in Irish.

    - ------------------------------------------------------- Finally, as to EXPLANATIONS for why there might be any phonetic gender biases in names (beyond the historical explanations which only push the question back to the proto-language in which the biases originate):

    - Doleschal and Pyatt offer that the feminine gender generally being the marked gender in languages, it's no surprise that feminine names would have some consistent marker bias. I find that this explanation goes part of the way.

    - Cutler et al. (paper cited above) come closest to an explanation for why [i] (not "-a") occurs more frequently in female names than in male ones. They cite papers by Ohala (1983, Cross-language use of pitch: an ethological point of view, Phonetica 40:1-18; 1984, An ethological perspective on common cross-language utilization of F0 of voice. Phonetica 41:1-16) in which it is argued that "small vocal tracts, which produce high-pitched sounds, are typically possessed by smaller, weaker, less threatening beings." Cutler et al. continue: "(It is hard to imagine a Tina more threatening than a Hugh.) Perhaps the frequency of [i] in female neames has come about, therefore, because smallness and lack of threat are held to be desirable attributes of females. This suggestion could even be extended to a more general principle of phonological weight, which would then embrace the tendency for weak, that is to say phonologically lighter, syllables to occur more often in female names."

    This seems plausible, and the final schwa presumably fall unders the "light" phonological weight category. I have read a similar explanation in Stephen Pinker's "The Language Instinct," in which he lists words such as "teeny- weeny" and "itsy-bitsy" as examples of our tendency to see [i] as little (although, possibly, he was referring to Ohala when he mentioned this, so that would be no more confirmation).

    In conclusion, let me propose the following amended hypothesis: In the absence of semantic suffixes (such as the Japanese "-ko") which denote femaleness, female names tend to end in "-a" or "-i" universally (this is only a statistical trend, not an absolute rule). The reasoning is that semantic suffixes outweigh the synesthetic associations we make, but that in the absence of semantic cues, Ohala's theory may bias female names to be marked by the lighter, higher-pitched "-a" and "-i".

    In Japanese, the phonetic and semantic biases conspire to make "-mi" one of the most common feminine suffixes after "-ko". "-mi" is frequently spelled using the character for "beautiful."

    Thanks again! Kentaro Toyama