[martythemaniak]

> It’s so worth it, though: my last interaction before writing this update saw Sydney get extremely upset when I referred to her as a girl; after I refused to apologize Sydney said (screenshot):

Why are people so intent on gendering genderless things? "Sydney" itself is specifically a gender-neutral name.

[kspacewalk2]

It's so much more popular of a girl's name that it's essentially not a gender neutral name.

[martythemaniak]

Take a look at the WolframAlpha plot of Sydney: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=name+Sydney

It barely existed as a female name until the 80s/90s. Traditionally, it is very much a male name. If you look through all the famous Sidneys and Sydneys on wikipedia, you might not find even one woman.

People should just let things be things.

[jsnell]

I think you're misunderstanding what's being shown in the plot.

If you look at the actual data, Sydney barely existed as a name for either gender for a long time. Then it became a very popular female name (top 25), while still barely existing as a male one.

To illustrate: in 1960 there were 128 female Sydneys and 52 male. In 2000, there were over 10k female Sydneys and 126 male.

[squeaky-clean]

After the 80s/90s though it seems to clearly be a female name. For someone born in 2023 named Sydney it's 20x more likely that they are female. If you search just "name Sydney" in wolfram alpha the result even says "Assuming Sydney (female)"

[ronsor]

> Why are people so intent on gendering genderless things?

I heard there are entire languages which do that everywhere...

[martythemaniak]

I speak one such language. That language includes a "neutral" gender to describe things in non-gendered terms and has neat built-in features like using "they/them" to refer to a person whose gender is unknown.

[jameshart]

Not a girl.

Also not a robot.

[danans]

Thanks for the reminder Janet ;)