Last year, after my fiancée Kara learned she was pregnant, we decided to wait until delivery to learn whether we were going to have a boy or a girl. While I was indifferent about whether I learned the sex of my child from a sonogram or a live birth, Kara was set on being surprised on the day of delivery. Since she felt more strongly about it than I did, I went along. So, we would not know we were going to have a daughter until the day our daughter was born.

Though we went through the pregnancy not knowing the sex of our baby, we suffered no agony debating names for our child. We had no list of possible names that we had to winnow down. We did not have separate lists depending on whether we had a boy or a girl. There was only one name we ever considered, and it was the name we settled on.

We named her Lincoln.

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'There was only one name we ever considered, and it was the name we settled on.' Image via iStock.

Life teaches us that the pursuit of happiness and the development of an identity do not make for an easy journey. Life is full of challenges. We begin life endowed with a set of congenital abilities, environmental pressures, and an emerging personality that is shaped by the interplay between genes and environment. Among the basic characteristics with which we are endowed are sex and gender. For our daughter, sex is the biological fact of being female, which gives rise to realities such as menstruation, or not being as physically strong as men (on average). Gender is the cultural embodiment of being female, encompassing all the attitudes, stereotypes, and assumptions associated with femininity. A woman’s (like a man’s) identity is, among other things, a function of the complex interplay between sex and gender.

"A woman’s (like a man’s) identity is, among other things, a function of the complex interplay between sex and gender." Image via iStock.

Self-confidence, however, is only one factor to consider.

Whatever the case, it is safe to conclude that a child’s name is not the only determining factor in his or her life outcomes. Nonetheless, it is still one factor among many, and to the extent it does have an effect, Kara and I are amenable to the notion that a name which neutralises assumptions about our daughter’s gender could be advantageous to how she is positioned in society when she becomes an adult (all else equal, of course; maybe by the time she is an adult, the subliminal discrimination that inspired the so-called Portia hypothesis will be a thing of the past, or perhaps reverse discrimination will be in effect, so that male names are suddenly subject to subliminal bias; but we highly doubt it.)

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We are also fond of the idea that she will have a “unique’ name,” as we want her to think of herself as a unique individual who chooses and actualises her own life per her own standards. Perhaps one might think,Lincoln is not so unique a name after all, or one can alternatively say that naming her after the former president binds her to the legacy of the former president. This is not a bad thing considering who that president was, but it is not necessarily consistent with allowing her to develop her own sense of identity. Yet one could probably say the same thing about any name, to greater or lesser degrees.

In closing, perhaps the most enduring legacy of her name will be that “Lincoln” is often assumed to be the name of a man. Kara likes the idea that the odds are thereby against the possibility that her resume is ditched from a slush pile by lingering biases of the patriarchy. But on the other hand, it may take some effort for her to resist the pressures of conformity from peers who would try to convince her that a male name is an unpopular name for a female, and that we bear some responsibility for exposing her to such taunts. But we consider the risk to be worth it. We don’t want her decisions and choices being unduly impacted by expectations she develops about how she should act given that she has a “feminine” name. That is not to put her in a state of denial, or that we are encouraging her to not be proud of being a woman. It is only a way to help neutralise cultural stereotypes and assumptions people may be inclined to make about her because she is a woman.

The post originally appeared on The Good Men Project and was republished here with full permission.