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Tue 19 Jul, 2011 06:15 pm
I am not good at judging gender from one's English names? How to improve this ability?
From the context below, I deem:
JACKIE CALMES: male
JENNIFER STEINHAUER : female
ALAN COWELL : male
GRAHAM BOWLEY: male
Am I on the right track?
Context:
Obama Renews Push for a Bipartisan Deal on Debt
By JACKIE CALMES and JENNIFER STEINHAUER 3:38 PM ET
A group of senators made a new push to win backing for an ambitious deficit-reduction proposal that includes new revenues and deep spending cuts.
Dow Barrels Ahead After Debt Remarks 4:37 PM ET
.Murdochs Say Top Executives Didn’t Know of Phone Hacking
By ALAN COWELL and GRAHAM BOWLEY 5:02 PM ET
Before British lawmakers, Rupert Murdoch and figures from his media empire insisted they had not ordered or tried to cover up unethical newsgathering.
There are really no rules which can guide you. For example, Jackie can be a man or a woman's name. This is arcane knowledge--you just have to learn it, there's no formula which will tell you.
There are many women in the U.S. who use indistinguishable names for reasons that are unclear to me.
I remember one, a friend of a friend named Brown Pickering - that was my own first clue that I couldn't just count on names - and that was 50 years ago. (I never met her and know nothing at all about her.)
I agree with Setanta. You can make a good estimate regarding many names, and there are patterns, but .. you cannot count on them.
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