Unisex Names & Word Names

I don't know how my Adolescent Studies professor gets going on some of his tangents, but for whatever reason, he ended up talking about the small percentage of babies who are born with ambiguous genitalia such that you can't tell what gender the baby is. Apparently, at some point there was a law in most of the U.S. (whether or not it's still on the books is in dispute) that you couldn't take the baby out of the hospital until you had made a decision about "what" it was and had the proper "corrective" surgery. How would you know you were making the right choice? And would your baby's gender really matter to most parents, as long as you had a beautiful child to love? Those were my first questions. Then, of course, I thought to myself: What if I had such a child--what could I name it so that, whatever gender the child came to identify with, the name would fit? In other words, I started wondering about unisex names.

We all know the traditional list of "unisex" names, such as Terry, Robin, Jackie, etc. Many of these names end up being nicknames for fairly different, gender-specific names, and therefore, in my mind, unacceptable as given names. Terry could be short for Teresa or Terrence; Jackie short for Jacqueline or familiar for Jack or even John. The truth is, most of those names carry some gender valence anyway: Kelly is almost always a girl, though I know a male Kelly; Jude is strongly masculine to me, despite being a nickname for Judith. To complicate things further, the gender valence of a name may change depending on how it's spelled (as in Aaron and Erin, Loren and Lauren, Cary and Carrie), which wouldn't be very helpful if you were naming someone whose gender you don't actually know. No, I am looking for truly unisex names, ones where the kindergarten teacher can look at the name on the sheet and have no idea who owns it, where the owner could change their clothes but keep the name.

Plus, I want names that I don't think suck. I'm not interested in all the "cross-over" names and surnames as first names that are popular today. They're fine for some people, I guess, though I have a beef with them not having much of an etymology. But essentially, they're just not my style. In case you're not sure what I'm talking about, that list includes names like Madison, Avery, Kennedy, Mackenzie, Reese, Riley, Laney, Tegan, etc.

My general observation is that the most successful (by success I mean as gender-neutral as possible and as non-sucky as possible) unisex names are word names. I made a pretty long list, but here are a few. It would take a lot for me to give up on baby Ivan and Isadora, but some of them are actually worth considering.

Unisex Word Names
Aspen
Cedar
Day
Ember
Grey
Indigo
Marin / Maren
Moon
Night
Ocean
Paz
Phoenix
Raven
Rio
River
Shadow
Sky
Story
Thessaly
Topaz
Vox
Zenith
Zephyr

In addition, here are a few from traditional naming practices, though not all are Western / European. Personally, I think there's more to dispute here as far as gender-neutrality goes. Of course, you are always welcome to dispute my taste.

Other Unisex Names
Casey
Ilar
Jaime
Jody
Fallon
Morgan
Pavan / Pavane
Umi
Wynn

Despite the alleged neutrality of these names, I still think I would prefer most of them on one gender or another. Maybe that says something about how much our society values an easy division of gender. Naturally, I hope I never am surprised with a child whose path through life will be so much more difficult than it should be just because of biology, and if I ever were in such a position, I hope the kid's name would not be at the forefront of my thoughts.