When it came to choosing names for their three kids, Peta and her husband Will were looking for “fairly gender-neutral” choices.
“I didn’t want really blokey names like Gary or Bruce,” Peta explains. “We wanted names that would allow for their personality to shine through, rather than the name setting up their personality.”
The couple named their second son Harper. In recent years, with the help of Harper Beckham, the name has become far more popular for girls than boys. There are now about 20 female baby Harpers in Australia for every male baby Harper.
Peta says until very recently, her son had only met girls who shared his name. That’s okay.
“As far as we know, Harper has never been teased about having a girls’ name,” Peta says.
Peta’s not sure whether giving Harper an ungendered name has had any impact on his personality. But she knows it was a good choice.
“He does travel a bit in his own orbit, and he is a creative thinker, so I think it sits well with him.”
Unisex names aren’t new. Think Lee/Leigh, Robin/Robyn, Kim/Kym, Ashley/Ashleigh, etc. But because the way we name our kids is changing, there are more unisex names around. We’re not as conservative in our naming choices as our parents were. We choose from a wider range of names, and we don’t care as much about tradition.
“As parents increasingly seek out fresh new name ideas, they're turning away from traditional given names that had strong gender associations,” Laura Wattenberg, author of The Baby Name Wizard, tells Mamamia. “In their place we see more surnames, words and place names adopted as baby names, and new inventions chosen for their sound. Most of those names come with no built-in gender link. Inevitably, that means more names given to both boys and girls.”
Of course, we’re still a long way off having the same names topping both the boys’ and girls’ popularity lists. In fact, there’s only one name currently in the Australian top 100 for both genders: Charlie. But here are 20 names being used in Australia right now for both boys and girls.
Australia’s top unisex names
- Charlie
- Riley
- Bailey
- Darcy
- Marley
- Jordan
- Elliot
- Blake
- Frankie
- Emerson
- Sage
- Harper
- Taylor
- Harley
- Murphy
- Asher
- Phoenix
- Morgan
- River
- Dallas
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Top Comments
Both my children have unisex names (one featured on the list above). It was not intentional, we just liked the names and felt it suited them.
I am an English teacher, so I wanted names for my children which were classic, but not popular at the time, there is nothing worst than being called Michael P or Emma C, all the way through school. My eldest, a son, was called Tomas on my husband's, who is Spanish, insistence.My husband did insist that our kid's names could be translated into Spanish. Our second child, a girl, I found a wonderful Spanish name, Ines. Then we moved to America, but we always intended to come back to Australia. While we were there I had two more daughters, we called Olivia and Isabel, everyone in America commented ho great the names were, old fashioned and unusual. However, when we returned home to live a couple of years later, the names had become popular and grew in popularity as the years went by. So my intention to have unusual names went out the window, there were lots of Olivias and Isabels. Were my choices, without me realising, in some way a culturally influenced precedent, or was just it just a coincidence?