Allyson writes:<\/p>\n
In my constant search to find more than one girl’s name that my husband doesn’t hate, I came across Ellison. I like the sound of it and the nickname Ellie is cute, as is Elle. Google and baby name forums, however, tell me that most people see it as a boy name, due to the -son ending. But that logic doesn’t makes sense to me since Allison, Madison, etc., are firmly in the girl category these days.What are your thoughts? Maybe a poll?<\/p>\n
The second issue is my name is Allyson. Is it weird to name a baby girl Ellison since it is so close to my name?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
As you’ve found, there are plenty of people who think that the -son ending of Ellison, Allison, Emerson, and Madison means those names should be “boy names.” In some cultures, the suffix -son did sometimes mean “son of,” as did the prefixes “Mc-” and “Mac-” and even “B-“. If -son did mean “son of” in our culture, it would be extremely odd to name a child Emerson if his father’s name weren’t Emery—like saying outright that he’d been fathered by another man. Instead, in American English, -son is just a sound, and can be used without revealing the child’s sex or parentage. The same sound can be spelled -sen, -syn, -sin, -san, -sun, -synne, etc.<\/p>\n
Even if we did believe the suffix -son ought to always indicate a boy’s name (and a boy’s father’s name), this belief would run counter to the way the names are actually being used. When we consider whether to call a name a “boy name” or a “girl name,” what we look at is its current usage in its current location. Ashley, for example, is neither a “boy name” nor a “girl name”; Ashley is a name that in the United States was once used for boys and is currently used for girls.<\/p>\n
So let’s look at the current usage of the name Ellison: in 2012, the name was given to 234 new baby girls and 43 new baby boys. The spelling Ellyson was given to another 36 new baby girls; the spelling Ellisyn to another 45 new baby girls. I’d say this makes Ellison a unisex name currently used more often for girls. The popularity of El- names for girls right now, plus the similarity to the name Allison, would make me push it even a little further toward the girl side; I don’t think I’d recommend it for boys right now.<\/p>\n
We can also look at the usage from recent years, to get an idea of where the name is headed. Looking only at the main spelling Ellison:<\/p>\n
2007: 150 girls, 22 boys
\n2008: 172 girls, 29 boys
\n2009: 146 girls, 31 boys
\n2010: 196 girls, 30 boys
\n2011: 234 girls, 31 boys
\n2012: 234 girls, 43 boys<\/p>\nOverall, the name Ellison is rising for both girls and boys, while staying more common for girls.<\/p>\n
The similarity of Ellison to Allyson would be my primary concern. They’re very, very similar: only one slight vowel-sound difference between them. The mix-ups would be a continual issue—and the spelling difference might also lead to a lot of Ellyson, Ellisyn, and Allison mistakes. But I don’t think this has to rule the name out: I think a lot of people would even get a kick out of it (though perhaps that too might get a little tiresome). It helps that the names are generationally appropriate: if I knew of a mother-daughter pair named Ellison and Allyson, I would be able to guess which was which and be fairly confident of my accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Allyson writes: In my constant search to find more than one girl’s name that my husband doesn’t hate, I came across Ellison. I like the sound of it and the nickname Ellie is cute, as is Elle. Google and baby name forums, however, tell me that most people see it as a boy name, due […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2dK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8540"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8547,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8540\/revisions\/8547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}