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Friday Fun Thread for December 6, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Who'd ever name their son Sue? It's something out of a Johnny Cash song, no real dad would do this, right?

Guess what? Meet Stacy Smith, the chairman of Autodesk and 100% not a diversity hire.

Mike Hammer was played by Stacy Keach! I was going to link a clip of him being a bad ass but I couldn't find a good one, so here's another clip of Stacy Keach being very unfeminine - https://youtube.com/watch?v=uGXEsFRpHq8?si=Xtn_ItFJaT1uPSHX

Lots of female names were formerly unisex names. Famously Evelyn Waugh (the male writer) was married to a female Evelyn.

But eventually, in most case, the female name crowds out the male name. Stacy (like Shannon) was a relatively newfangled name post WWII that was originally mostly female but perhaps 20% male. Now it's 100% female coded.

In 20 years, people will be saying, "Haha, this guy is named Taylor. Did his dad want him to get beat up, haha".

Or Ariel.

Also Ashley.

Likewise Vivian/Vivienne. Vivienne doesn't see much use anymore and Vivian has been pretty much 100% ceded as a female name, but as recently as the 1980s a Britcom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Young_Ones_(TV_series)) had a male character in it named Vivian (or Vyvyan, rather), and I don't think it was intended to be a joke like "ha ha this edgy punk has a girly name".

Lynn, Leslie and Kimberly were all common enough male British names too.

I believe the modern convention is that "Leslie" is female and "Lesley" is male.

Horrible name for a person of either sex though.

Famously Evelyn Waugh (the male writer) was married to a female Evelyn.

I heard she was wild in bed. A real homonymph.

This is actually not an unheard of Anglo boy name -- I've worked with one, anyways. I presumed it was some kind of family tradition.

That particular guy did have a bit of a violent insecurity complex though (and you could bully him at any time just by saying his name with the right inflection!), so maybe the song is true?