I or Y
Someone wrote…
I want to change my name to something more gender-neutral like “Toni/y,” but I’m not sure whether to pick the “i” or the “y” at the end. I feel like the “y” would get me perceived as just another guy (when I’m writing, and everybody can see my name), and the “i” would get me perceived as just a tomboy. I don’t know which one to choose.
What’s your experience?
Posted by Freiya on January 10th, 2013 at 08:00 am
Category: your voice 6 comments »
January 10th, 2013 at 9:08 am |
How about a completely different spelling? Tonei… Tonné (tell people it’s French…)
Ok, someone better at linguists than me might be able to come up with something :P
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January 10th, 2013 at 10:35 am |
Anthoni..?
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January 10th, 2013 at 2:43 pm |
If all you’re worried about is gender perception, keep in mind there are a lot more ways to express your gender than your name. One thing you could do is think of which gender you are most commonly perceived as/most often express, and pick the contrasting spelling. Or just go with the one you honestly like best when you aren’t worrying about gender.
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January 16th, 2013 at 7:00 pm |
Tonee
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January 22nd, 2013 at 8:31 pm |
The “i” ending is definitely feminine in English (that, by the way, is why I also have a problem with the word “boi.”) Go with the “y” ending; it’s grammatically gender-neutral, though in this name it is masculine. Anyway, in most romance languages neuter nouns and adjectives look more like the masculine than the feminine ones.
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anonymous replied:
January 31st, 2013 at 4:27 pm
well, really, any ending is grammatically gender neutral in english, because in english we don’t decline nouns based on gender. kind of like how we borrow a bunch of nouns from other languages, then insist on pluralizing them our way, so we end up with screwy words like “raviolis” and “candelabras”
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