Portrait of Sigourney Webster Fay in 1855 when he was 18 (Boston Athanaem) |
Lydia Sigourney, 1820 |
Sigourney Weaver as Warrant Officer Ripley in the movie Alien (1976) |
Chasing the Animal Spirits of Name Popularity
Portrait of Sigourney Webster Fay in 1855 when he was 18 (Boston Athanaem) |
Lydia Sigourney, 1820 |
Sigourney Weaver as Warrant Officer Ripley in the movie Alien (1976) |
Old period films like Gone With the Wind can have a huge influence on which names we see as classic or traditional. It's often hard to imagine what it was like to hear these names for the first time and how they would have sounded to contemporary audiences. In the case of Gone With the Wind, what modern viewers are missing is that the three main characters, Scarlett O'Hara, Rhett Butler and Ashley Wilkes, are all using uncommon surnames as first names.
Surnames as first names only started going beyond family names and heros in the 1800s and only started becoming popular enough to shake off the surname style individually at the turn of the 20th century. The names in Gone With the Wind fit with the established stereotype of wealthy and privileged men and women using surnames as first names but they weren't individually common names.
Gone With the Wind is set in the 1850s and 60s American Civil War era in the south. The book was written in 1936 by Margaret Mitchell and the movie staring Vivian Leigh and Clark Gable was released in 1939.
In the book, Katie Scarlett O'Hara was named after her paternal grandmother Katie Scarlett. Having a surname in the middle spot was not uncommon in the south for boys as well as girls. In fact, when middle names started being adopted in the 1800s, they were just as likely to be a family surname as another Christian name. As a first name in general, Scarlett was rare and used by men as well as women. The origin of her name is explained in the book, but movie viewers would have heard her father Gerald O'Hara refer to her as "Katie Scarlett" and the two T spelling in the beginning credits indicated a significance beyond the colour. But WWII era parents did not immediately fall in love with the name Scarlett. It first entered the SSA stats in 1937 but stayed below 200 girls a year until the 2000s.
Katie Scarlett O'Hara |
The name of the character Rhett Bulter might have been inspired by South Carolina politician Robert B. Rhett, known for leading the Fire-Eaters and for being "the father of succesion". The 1850 US census lists only 8 men with it as a first name. It's only become popular in the real world since the 2000s.
George Ashley Wilkes also goes by his middle name but it was a bit more common as a first name than the others, with over 750 people recorded with Ashley as a first name in the 1850 census (about 10 of them were women). But to put that in perspective, the surname Wiley was about 7 times more common, Jefferson and Wilson 10 times more common, and Washington almost 15 times more common as a first name than Ashley. It wasn't even the most common -ley surname being used as a first name. Ashley Wilkes could have easily been a Bailey Wilkes, a Riley Wilkes or Presley Wilkes and been appropriate for the period. Even accounting for 1930s name tastes, Margaret Mitchell might have called him Oakley Wilkes, as that name was about as common for baby boys in her time as Ashley.
"Oh, Wiley!" |
The recent popularity of Ashley might have blinded modern audiences to its surname style, but the contemporary audience was well aware and viewed it as a unisex surname. The book had a small effect on the popularity of Ashley for boys, going from 30 per year to 50, but it also influenced its use for girls. The year 1938 marks the beginning of Ashley trending for girls, starting with 7 and then hovering around 10 per year until the 1950s. It overtook the boys in 1964 with 184 girls named. It was most popular for boys in Georgia and North Carolina in the US, pointing towards Gone With the Wind as the major influence.
If you want to put the fictional Wilkes family naming taste in perspective, don't forget about Ashley's sister, India Wilkes. Her name was about half as common as Ashley but still more common than Scarlett and Rhett. Other surnames you might not have noticed in the film are Brent, Stuart and Beauregard. You can thank Gone With The Wind for Beau as well. It was very rare as a stand alone name and Beau is much more common today than it ever was in the 1860s.
India did not catch on as a name. |
Gone With the Wind had a huge impact on our perception of these names. They were uncommon for the time it was written and the period it was written about. The film's place as one of the most iconic films in history gave the names a classic and traditional feel and influenced their modern popularity.
Ashley is a popular name in English speaking countries, but whether it's more popular for men or women depends on the country. The following map was created using name data from each country. In some countries, the full dataset was not available so gaps were estimated using ranking information and calibrating it to population data. In the case of Australia, the Victoria data was estimated using the New South Wales data based on Ashley being in the top 100 girl names in 2008, and not Ashleigh. This estimating should not significantly affect the information presented, since I wanted to show the overall difference in gender split. The other story here is that the Ashleigh spelling was a popular name for girls in places where Ashley is more common for men. That's a another analysis though.
I did split up England and Wales and Scotland because there was a significant difference in usage, but there I had better data. Australia is similar with different states having different patterns of usage. The difference in Australia seems to be that overall Ashley/Ashleigh is more common for women and which spelling was chosen for girls depends on the state.
A Ward Industries ad for Nimrod pop-up campers in Popular Mechanics from 1965 |
….After they win that case, can whites engage their lawyer to lead in opposition to the advertisers use of that masculine, ear-ringed scrubwoman Mr. Clean? If Aunty’s image slights the negroes, what does the aforementioned nimrod do for whites?
Karl Kirkman, Pastor, Friedens United Church of Christ, Browns, IL
"There, my little Nimrod, is your wolf." Unconquered, 1947 |
Daffy Duck in the 1948 Looney Tunes short "What Makes Daffy Duck" |
Cohen is a Jewish surname that has recently started trending as a name for boys in the US, Canada, and the UK. It’s problematic because it’s closely associated with a special religious group within Judaism. I’m not Jewish, so I’ll paraphrase a reddit comment from r/namenerds on the subject:
Cohen is offensive because it isn’t just a surname, it is a hereditary title. Cohens (Kohanim in Hebrew) were the priestly class during the era of the Temple in Jerusalem, and were responsible for directing daily religious practices. ... Kohanim traditionally have special responsibilities within Judaism: they cannot marry converts or divorcees, and cannot come into contact with dead bodies. Because it is a hereditary title associated with special privileges, no Jew would ever use this as a first name, and it is in extremely poor taste for gentiles (non-Jews) to use it for the same reasons. It comes across as being extremely ignorant of our culture at best (a lot of people have never met a Jewish person before) and intentionally antisemitic at worst.
I’ve always wondered how such a name could start trending. Then a movie title caught my eye while reading about actor Adam Baldwin (you know, Jayne from Firefly). In 1989 he starred in a thriller movie called Cohen and Tate. Baldwin plays the brash younger assassin named Tate who is teamed up with an older, more professional assassin called Mr. Cohen (played by Roy Schneider, you know, Chief Brody in Jaws). I only watched the trailer but his surname seems to be the only Jewish thing about the character. He is referred to as Mr. Cohen but also simply as Cohen. Of course I had to check the baby name stats. Did this movie inspire the Cohen baby name trend?
The movie was released in the US in January of 1989, and that year Cohen was given to 8 boys in the US. But it was given to 13 boys the year before in 1988. Can a movie’s trailers and promos inspire a baby name? What other Cohen related media happened in 1988? Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen released his eighth and most popular album in the US, “I’m Your Man”. It’s not a slam dunk in name influence terms but after 1988 Cohen started slowly trending.
There was another Cohen kicking around at this time. Terry Pratchett’s second Discworld novel The Light Fantastic (1986) features a character named Cohen the Barbarian. He appears again in the 1994 book Interesting Times. He starred in his own book in 2001 in The Last Hero. I’ve read all these books and Cohen (or Ghenghiz Cohen) is a likable character. He’s a satirical take on the barbarian tropes in fantasy, and his name is a parody of Conan the Barbarian. He’s not Jewish. I can’t tell if Pratchett was subverting all sorts of Jewish stereotypes with this character name, or merely chose it for the puns. Either way by 2001 Cohen was being given to 50 boys a year in the US.
Then it happened. The event. The first episode of the American teen drama The O.C. aired in August 2003. It stars Adam Brody as Seth Cohen, the awkward but good looking, nerdy but charming, outcast but lovable teenager who befriends the troubled Ryan Atwood after he’s taken in by his father. Seth is Jewish! Well, his father is Jewish. His mother is Catholic, named Kirsten (that's a Scottish version of Christian). I didn’t watch The O.C. but I’ve read articles by Jewish authors describing how refreshing it was to see regular Jewish customs just being part of the every day family life of the Cohen family. The O.C. was written by Josh Schwartz who is Jewish and based much of the character of Seth Cohen on himself. On the show, Seth is often referred by his surname, Cohen, by his girlfriend and friends. Adam Brody won multiple Teen Choice Awards for his portrayal. I’ve seen Seth described as the Jewish “manic pixie dream boy” which would explain some of his appeal. He may have normalized Cohen as a name and the name stats support that.
I’ve heard that people choosing Cohen aren’t aware that Cohen is a particularly Jewish surname. A couple of the early influences weren’t obviously Jewish but Seth Cohen definitely was and Leonard Cohen was open about his faith. Americans in media have had to change their Jewish surnames to avoid antisemitism because Jewish surnames were identifiable, or at least known by those with antisemitic beliefs. According to creator Josh Schwartz, the original family name for Seth's family was Needleman. "Originally, when I started writing it, the Cohens were called the Needlemans so they were even more Jewish,". It was 'scaled back' to Cohen.
There are now about 28,000 American kids born in the last 20 years with some variation of Cohen, Kohen, Coen or Koen as their name (another couple thousand in Canada, and over 3,500 in England and Wales). There are other origins for these different spellings. There are lots of Dutch cyclists named Koen or Coen, pronounced closer to kun or koon. Cohen is also found as an Irish surname but more often spelt Coen. I've heard mention Cohen is an Australian indigenous word for thunder but I can't find a good reference. I'm convinced their popularity now in the US has been lead by the influence of Seth Cohen of The O.C. .
I have been enjoying articles on britishbabynames.com tagged "Twas Ever Thus". They are all clippings from old newspapers, magazines and sections from books on the topic of baby names from 100 to 200 years ago in the UK.
There are many articles written on the theme of how ridiculous it is when the lower classes chose upper class names. They should be choosing John not Frederick, Sarah not Eugenie, James not Theodore. But the article writers also look down their nose at the working class who choose "romantic names".
Here's a quote from a 1869 London periodical called Belgravia:
"Apropos of romantic names, I have it from a registrar of great experience that these are enormously affected by the lower orders, who get them from the romances in the penny papers."
Examples of these romantic names from the Victorian era included Yolande, Gladys, Beatrice, Ethel, Gertrude, Blanche, Eva, Dora, Mabel, Amy, Evelyn, Maud, Florence, Marguerite, and May.
The writer from 1869 also drops this little tidbit about names used for both sexes:
"Happily there is one folly in christening which has never strengthened into a fashion, namely, that of confounding the names proper to the two sexes. This has been done to a slight extent, however. I once knew a lady named Charles; Joey has been bestowed on a female infant; and Brown, the author of Britannia's Pastorals, is said to have married a Miss Timothy Eversfield, of Den in Sussex. Evelyn is one of the bewildering names without sex."
So there you have it. Not only was Evelyn a trendy Victorian name for girls, it was also unisex (plus it was also the alternative spelling of Eveline, a spelling which C.M. Yonge warned against using in 1863).
Twas Ever Thus.
Source: Belgravia, "Concerning M. or N." page 389, United Kingdom, 1869
Ursula the sea witch from Disney's The Little Mermaid (1989) |
Ursula Andress in Loaded Guns (1975) |
Andress in the movie She (1965) |
George Costanza: Artemis N. Falkmore.Jerry Seinfeld: You made that up, right?George Costanza: Yeah. But it sounds like a president name, doesn't it?
A type name is an eponym that comes from a given name that is used frequently by a generalized group of people. The most popular one at the moment is a Karen, used to describe a middle aged entitled woman. Most type names fade and lose their associations but some of them have stuck around. They evolved into words we still use today. Here are a couple that come from men’s given names or nicknames.
Hick – One of the many medieval short forms of Richard in England
was Hick or Hikke. Often the leading R would get changed to an “H” as in Hob
for Robert or Hodge for Rodger. Richard was a very popular name and Hick came
to be used as a general name for any hosteler (innkeeper) or hackneyman (hires
out coaches or horses). By the 1700 it had become a name that describes an
awkward provincial person, and then by 1900 was being used as an adjective, as
in “hick town” for a rural town.
Rube – After the Protestant Reformation in England, Old
Testament names started to become popular as an alternative to New Testament
and Saint names which were perceived to be too Catholic. Reuben was popular and
was shortened to Reub or Rube. By 1804 it was being used as a type name to refer
to a farmer, rustic or country bumpkin.
Zany – The Venetian diminutive of Giovanni (the Italian form
of John) was Zanni and was used as the name of a buffoon character in comedic
plays. The Zanni would mimic the actions of the principal in an exaggerated way. It
was also used as the name of any unnamed character that wasn’t one of the main comedic
characters. It was basically the Italian version of Jack. One of Zanni’s other
traits was carrying around the props of the other characters, so another more
archaic meaning for a zany is a toady or servile follower. This is probably
closer to the meaning Shakespeare meant in the play Love’s Labour’s Lost.
Jacket - In medieval France, Jacques was used as a type name
for a French peasant, from the French form of the Greek Iocubus, the same root
as the English Jacob and James. Jaques or Jakke was then used to describe a
type of tunic that was short and quilted for defense. The word existed in England
in the 14th century and jacket is likely a diminutive of this to
describe a short coat with sleeves for men by mid 15th century.
Yankee – In the 17th century there were a lot of Dutch
colonists in New Amsterdam (now New York) and they referred to those rotten
Englishmen over in Connecticut as Yankees, possibly from Janke or Janneke, the
diminutive of Jan, the Dutch version of John. Or it was the English who were
using it to refer to those lazy Dutch colonists. Either way it has been used derogatively
and reclaimed a couple times, notably in the song Yankee Doodle, written by the
English to make fun of the Americans during the American Revolutionary War, and
adopted by Connecticut as the state’s official song.
Jockey – Jock is the Scottish variant of the name John, and
the diminutive Jockey was used to refer to any person or fellow in the 16th
century, like Johnny. It then became used to refer to a person who rides horses
in races by the mid 17th century. The verb ‘to jockey’ which means
to trick, outwit or gain advantage comes from the related profession of horse
trading. A jock, an athletic man, comes from the word jockstrap, “athletic support”,
but jock in this sense is used as slang for penis, like the English “dick”.
There is a whole list of words that stem from the name Jack
being used as a type name, but those are clearly connected to the name and less
obscure. Others which were also used as type names before they were used for
tools are billie (club) and jimmy (pry). I made a list of Words from Women's Type Names as well.
Source: etymonline.com
Crystal has been around as a woman's name since the 19th century in the US. It was given to between 80 and 120 girls a year up until the 1940s. It rose very quickly in popularity in the 1970s and I was very surprised to find that it broke into the top 10 girls names (#9) in 1982. I'll be honest, and I apologize to anyone who may have this name, but it has always sounded like a stripper's stage name to me. Since I don't frequent strip clubs, this association must have been shaped by television and movies. I went on the hunt for the reasons of this impression.
The first bump in the name's popularity was likely due to Joan Crawford's portrayal of seductive perfume counter girl Crystal Allan in the 1939 film The Women (It's all about Men), a popular all-female cast film based on a 1936 play by Clare Booth Luce. She is the mistress who eventually marries the antagonist's ex-husband. Then in 1946 scream queen Evelyn Ankers plays a stripper named Crystal McCoy in the murder mystery Queen of Burlesque. Only two references in and I've already found a stripper named Crystal. The name was also used for one of the main characters in the film noir drama Three Strangers that same year. Geraldine Fitzgerald played Crystal Shackleford, a woman who lures two strangers to stand before a strange Chinese idol to make a wish. The name did get a small boost that year but neither character endeared the name to many people. It was also the first year the Krystal spelling appeared in the data given to at least 5 girls.
Joan Crawford as Crystal Allan in The Women. Source |
In 1951, Crystal might have gotten increased usage in and around Michigan due to a set of quadruplets born to the Rosebush family of Oakwood, Michigan, one of who was named Krystal. This won't be the last time alternative spellings of Crystal influence the name. In 1957 the role of Crystal Allan was played by Joan Collins in a remake of the 1939 movie called The Opposite Sex, although this version included men in the cast. There was a small increase in 1963 which I can only attribute to Barbara Eden's character Crystal Simpson in an episode of Rawhide. She is a conman's assistant who performs a harem dance to distract the crew, and was notably performed before Eden was cast as Jeannie in I Dream of Jeannie.
Barbara Eden as Crystal Simpson in a 1963 episode of Rawhide. Source |
Crystal Gayle on the cover of her 1976 album Crystal. Source |
Linda Evans as Krystle Carrington on the soap opera Dynasty. Source |
Looking at the characters given the name Crystal up until this point, they all have an element of an ambitious woman from less privileged backgrounds. Sometimes she's clever, sometimes kind, but usually she's using her sexual attractiveness to her advantage. Whether you thought that was something to be admired or treated with contempt probably predicted whether you liked the name enough to give it to your daughter.
It was in the late 1980s when the term "crystal meth" started becoming known more widely as slang for crystal methamphetamines and I wonder if that hastened the decline in popularity of Crystal. The Krystal spelling got a small bump in popularity in 1985, perhaps due to the singer Krystal Davis who had a hit song "So Smooth". In 1995 the movie Showgirls had a stripper named Cristal played by Gina Gershon.
Initially when I saw how the name was popular in states lowest on the American socio-economic spectrum, it seemed obvious why it would have a low class connotation. In 1995 when the writers named the Showgirls stripper Cristal, the majority of American Crystals of all spellings would have been under 25 years old and the name was already dropping quickly in the popularity charts. It seems a bit too soon for all the real world Crystals to have had a chance to influence the associations with the name, they seem to have been doomed from the very start no matter what profession they chose as adults.
End Note: After researching this name, I am a little disappointed that the soap opera character Krystle gets all the credit for the popularity of Crystal on the Wikipedia page. I would give Crystal Gayle a lot more credit, especially in the south. She was inspired to chose her stage name by the southern fast food chain Krystal and for the association with bright and shiny stones. The restaurant chose its name during the depression to inspire cleanliness. The terms 'crystal clean' appears to have had 19th century Christian religious associations, but that's a rabbit hole for another day.
Sources: Nancy.cc "What gave the baby name Krystal a boost in 1951?" , Wikipedia: Crystal Gayle , Wikipedia: Crystal (name)
After making the Jackson graph that had so many possible influences, I thought I'd graph a trendy name for contrast. Shelby was an uncommon surname used as a first name in the US, mainly for boys but occasionally for girls. There were three big influences on the name: Barbara Stanwyck playing Shelby Barrett in 1935, Julia Roberts as Shelby Eastenton-Latcherie in 1989, and Lt. Commander Shelby in 1990. It was interesting to see that the first peak in popularity for girls did not throw parents off giving it to boys, and that the second peak in 1989 actually created an increase in usage for boys. The eventual overwhelming popularity for girls does seem to have discouraged more parents from using it for their boys, especially after it appeared as the name of a female young teen on a show aimed at teenagers in The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo.
What makes a name popular? Jackson peaked in popularity in the US in 2013 but if you combine spelling varieties (Jaxon, Jaxson) it was the number one boy’s name from 2014 to 2020. I’ve mapped the appearance of notable characters in entertainment that were named Jackson to the popularity of the name (converted to % of boys named by year).
The key ingredient for name popularity seems to be variety. Jackson doesn’t get pigeonholed into just one type of character. He’s a suave lawyer or doctor, or a dorky scientist, a tortured artist, a goofy farmer, a privileged heir, a dangerous criminal, or biker gang member. The artsy parents pick it for the artist association, the cool parents pick it for biker association, and the preppy parents pick it for the doctor association. Parents looking for the nickname Jax popularized by the Sons of Anarchy character are driving the Jaxon and Jaxson spellings.
Some notes: I have never watched Stargate but I have read that the character Dr. Daniel Jackson gets referred to on the show as Jackson enough that the association with the character is there. First name position usually has a bigger influence than last name, but in this case I think it was worth mentioning.
Also, I wasn’t convinced the movie Luster had much impact in 2002, but there was a spike in popularity that year, so I checked celebrity babies. Carson Daly and Siri Spinter, Brent Spiner and Loree McBride, and Maria Bello and Dan McDermott (Jackson Blue!) all named sons Jackson during that period.
Hayden is another surname that has been transferred over into first name usage in the US and Canada. This graphic follows the influences on its popularity. Missing from this graphic (because I ran out of room) is the female character Hayden Chase who first appeared on the show Alias in 2005. Let me know if you think there is another influence I may be missing.
In my search for examples of feminine names that have switched over to masculine names, I came across Kimberly.
The story starts way back with the Old English woman's name Cyneburg, which means “royal fortress”. St. Cyneburg was the daughter of 7th century King Penda, and she was the founder of an abbey in Northhamptonshire called Cyneburgecaestre (it’s now called Castor). Kimberley appears in the 1086 Doomsday book as a location name Chineburlai, meaning woodland clearing of the royal fortress. It became the location surname of residents of the area. Cyneburg did also carry on as a woman’s name in forms such as Kingburgh or Kinborough, and Kimbery through to the 17th century.
Skip ahead to 1890, John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of Kimberley lends his name to the mining town of Kimberley, North Cape, South Africa. A bit of a malicious compliance story on how they chose the name: “… John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of Kimberley, insisted that before electoral divisions could be defined, the places had to receive decent and intelligible names. His Lordship declined to be in any way connected with such a vulgarism as New Rush and as for the Dutch name, Vooruitzigt … he could neither spell nor pronounce it. The Colonial Secretary tasked with the job made quite sure that Lord Kimberley would be able both to spell and pronounce the name of the main electoral division by, as he says, calling it 'after His Lordship'. New Rush became Kimberley, by Proclamation dated 5 July 1873.”
The mining town was the site of the Siege of Kimberley in 1899 during the Boer War. It started to be given to boys and a few girls as either a famous battle name, or to commemorate a relative who died there. It was still pretty rare in the UK, about 30 boys and 10 girls were named Kimberley in the 10 years after the battle. About another 400 boys and girls were given it as a middle name.
This is where I have to explain the popularity of a completely different name: Kim. In the US, Kim was used as a short name for Kimball, an uncommon surname as first name used mainly by men in the US during the 19th century. In 1850, 245 Kimballs lived in the US. Kim itself started to get used rarely for boys after Rudyard Kipling’s book Kim was published in 1901. In that book, the boy is named Kim short for Kimball. For Kim in the UK, I didn’t find many examples and where I did, they were in Ireland and Scotland. Kim is also a man’s name in Scandinavian countries, short for Joachim.
There were both men and women with the first name Kim in the SSA database after 1900 but it started getting popular for girls after it appeared in Edna Ferber's 1926 novel Show Boat, where the protagonist names her daughter Kim after the first three letters of the American states: Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri. It was a very rare unisex name until Kim took off for boys after the 1950 film adaption of the Kipling book, which starred Errol Flynn. There was also a character called Kim Parker, a female reporter in the 1949 Ma and Pa Kettle movie series. It got way more popular for girls in the late 50s, probably due to the influence of actresses Kim Hunter and Kim Novak, who both chose it as a stage name. Kim Hunter was in the 1951 movie A Streetcar Named Desire and Kim Novak was in Vertigo in 1958. Following right behind it was the name Kimberly. I didn’t find a reason why Kimberly took over. I am guessing it was considered the longer, formal form of Kim, despite Kim getting popular first (it peaked at #34 for girls and #98 for boys).
Kimberly was very popular for girls in the late 60s in the US and occasionally given to boys. It peaked for both at the same time although for boys it only reached #552. It peaked for girls in 1967 at #2 and has remained relatively popular ever since with a slow decline (It still ranks #184 in 2020). In the UK, New Zealand and Australia, the Kimberley spelling was more popular and shot up in popularity only in 1981, I’m guessing because of singer Kim Wilde (who was also just Kim, born in 1960 at the peak of Kim in the UK, so again more parents chose the ‘long form’ of a trending name). In Australia you are more likely to run into a Kim-just-Kim than a Kimberley, although the Kims will be older than the Kimberleys.
So although Kim could be seen as masculine short name that became feminine, Kimberly/Kimberley does appear to have feminine roots and to have at least been considered unisex since the beginning of its popular usage as a first name. Not quite a girl name on a boy, but also not a case of a boy name “going to the girls”.
A type name is a personal name used to describe a type of person who is most likely to have the name, like Karen is used to describe a middle aged woman who might feel a little too entitled. These are different from eponyms as they aren't used in reference to one person with the name, but to all people with the name. I've collected these words as historical examples of when a popular woman's name or nickname was used to describe a type of person, which then evolved into a new word.
St. Tib's Eve
Tib is an old nickname for Isabel, popular in Europe during the Middle ages, and often paired with Tom in the same way Jack is paired with Jill. Tib came to mean prostitute in the 1500s, and spawned the phrase "on St. Tib's eve", meaning something very unlikely to happen similar to "when hell freezes over", because a prostitute would never be made a saint. (St. Tib's Eve is celebrated in Newfoundland on Dec 23rd, because Newfies).
Jilt
Jill is a short form for Jillian or Gillian, the Middle English common form of Juliana. It was very popular in medieval England, and became a generic term for a girl in the early 1400s, and paired with Jack since mid 1400s. Gillet (or Jillet) was another diminutive that came from Jillian, and became a familiar or contemptuous name for a woman or girl. Jilt is probably from the contraction of jillet/gillet, and came to mean a loose, unchaste woman, or harlot from 1670s. From this you get the verb "to jilt", as in jilted lover, to mean give hope then discard.
Merkin
Malkyn was a diminutive of the name Maud/Mault (itself a shortened form of Matilda) or Mary during the Middle ages. It came to mean a woman of lower class, a slattern, or loose woman by the 1200s. From Malkyn came malkin which was used to refer to a mop, possibly from the sense of "untidy woman", or a bundle of rags. From the mop meaning you get merkin as the name of a wig for pubic hair used by prostitutes, attested to at least 1610s, which is still used today. Also related is grimalkin, the name of the witch's cat from Macbeth, from grey-malkyn where Malkyn was used a name for a female cat in the same way Tom is used for males.
Mollycoddle
The female proper name Molly or Moll served as a type name of a low-class girl or prostitute in old songs and ballads (perhaps in part for the sake of the easy rhymes) from the 1600s. Both are familiar forms of Mary. By the 1700s, molly was a colloquial term for a homosexual or effeminate male, and from that we get mollycoddle, which means to pamper or fuss over.
Biddy
From an Irish nickname for the very popular Brigid, used to refer to any Irish serving maid, and also a complaining old woman.
Floozie
From 1700s canting slang which used the name Florence to mean a well dressed wench, "touz'd and ruffled". The word flossy then appeared which in the 1890s was slang for fancy or frilly, and by 1902 floozie meant a woman of disreputable character.
Men's names have similar examples with Jack doing the lions share of the work in word creation. Examples include jacket, jockey, and hijack but there's also billy, jimmy, zany and yankee.
(Source: etymoline.com)
Cleo, June and Fay were at one time unisex names. Let's start with Cleo.
Cleo can be short for Cleopatra but it was also short for Cleon and the biblical name Cleopas. Cleon is from the Greek word for glory. Cleopas comes from the same root as Cleopatra, it is a short form of the masculine version Cleopatros. In the Gospel of Luke, Cleopas sees Jesus after his resurrection. Cleo for men is recorded more often in the SSA dataset than both Cleopas and Cleon. Cleo was still twice as popular for women in the 1920s, although women are over represented in the early data.
June can be short for Junius, a masculine name that had some use in the American south during the 1800s. The father of J.P. Morgan and the father of John Wilkes Booth were both named Junius, likely in honour of the anonymous author of the British Junius papers in which Junius was his pseudonym. June can also be found being used by women but widespread popular use only occurred in the late 19th century. June can also be short for Junior. A notable man with the name was June C. Smith, Illinois Supreme Court Judge.
And last but not least, as it is my favourite, is Fay. Fay is short for Lafayette, a popular man's name in the US in the 1800s, given in honour of American Revolutionary War commander Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette. Fayette, Lafe, and Fate are other short forms but Fay was the most popular at the turn of the century. Fay and Faye became more popular for women in the 1910s and '20s but Fay did still have some usage by men. Notable men include American sprinter Fay Moulton, baseball player Fay Thomas, and architect E. Fay Jones, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, and for whom the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design is named at the University of Arkansas.
Sigourney is a surname that originates from the French town of Sigournais. It was called Segurniacum in latin which is of unknown origin. Si...