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Help[Facts] My column on Courtney, Courteney, and Courtenay
Here is the link to today's column:
https://omaha.com/life-entertainment/local/article_a83db17a-1afa-4b8a-b2a1-51d6a25c6885.html
As of today the Wikipedia entry on this name seems to believe that it was a masculine name almost never used for girls before the 1956 novel "Chocolates for Breakfast," whose teen heroine was named Courtney, was published. However, during the 19th century there were actually more girls named Courtney than boys in the USA, which makes it one of the first surnames turned into a given name to be more popular for women than men. There was a big regional difference in this, though -- Courtney was highly skewed toward girls in the South while being more common for boys in the North.
Courtney did recede for girls in the early 20th century, but it was only between the years 1912 and 1961 that it was regularly more common for boys than girls in the Social Security data. This of course does make Courtney also very unusual in being a name which had been more common for females but then switched to being more common for males for a few decades. It was probably able to do this because it was fairly rare and its use for females in the 19th century was primarily a Southern phenomenon.
Interestingly, the actress Courteney Cox, whose birthday prompted the column, was named after her mother, which is a very rare example of a mother and daughter having the same first name in the modern USA. Since Ms. Cox was born in Alabama, this does fit in with the original Southern use of the name for girls.
https://omaha.com/life-entertainment/local/article_a83db17a-1afa-4b8a-b2a1-51d6a25c6885.html
https://omaha.com/life-entertainment/local/article_a83db17a-1afa-4b8a-b2a1-51d6a25c6885.html
As of today the Wikipedia entry on this name seems to believe that it was a masculine name almost never used for girls before the 1956 novel "Chocolates for Breakfast," whose teen heroine was named Courtney, was published. However, during the 19th century there were actually more girls named Courtney than boys in the USA, which makes it one of the first surnames turned into a given name to be more popular for women than men. There was a big regional difference in this, though -- Courtney was highly skewed toward girls in the South while being more common for boys in the North.
Courtney did recede for girls in the early 20th century, but it was only between the years 1912 and 1961 that it was regularly more common for boys than girls in the Social Security data. This of course does make Courtney also very unusual in being a name which had been more common for females but then switched to being more common for males for a few decades. It was probably able to do this because it was fairly rare and its use for females in the 19th century was primarily a Southern phenomenon.
Interestingly, the actress Courteney Cox, whose birthday prompted the column, was named after her mother, which is a very rare example of a mother and daughter having the same first name in the modern USA. Since Ms. Cox was born in Alabama, this does fit in with the original Southern use of the name for girls.
https://omaha.com/life-entertainment/local/article_a83db17a-1afa-4b8a-b2a1-51d6a25c6885.html
This message was edited 6/15/2025, 3:29 PM
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I didn't know Courtney Cox was named after her mother!
Most of the names with periods of dominant feminine usage don't get a mention on Wikipedia. It just doesn't come up as often because no one's out there wondering why a historical women has a masculine name the same way people wonder why a man has a feminine name. And there are far fewer historical women to wonder about. If you write the articles, I'll update the pages! Edit: Bookworm beat me to it.
As for names that have swapped from female to male: Sidney, Alison, Emmet, Wilmot, Evelyn, Christian, Marion, Tatum (on its way!), Parnell. The 1870 US census also had more women named Cory and Casey than men, but at such low numbers that very little can be said about gendered perception.
Most of the names with periods of dominant feminine usage don't get a mention on Wikipedia. It just doesn't come up as often because no one's out there wondering why a historical women has a masculine name the same way people wonder why a man has a feminine name. And there are far fewer historical women to wonder about. If you write the articles, I'll update the pages! Edit: Bookworm beat me to it.
As for names that have swapped from female to male: Sidney, Alison, Emmet, Wilmot, Evelyn, Christian, Marion, Tatum (on its way!), Parnell. The 1870 US census also had more women named Cory and Casey than men, but at such low numbers that very little can be said about gendered perception.
This message was edited yesterday, 4:17 AM
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