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gwern comments on Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych - Less Wrong
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How in the earth did you get 'he' from 'Sharon'?
The last prominent world leader of that name was male, I believe.
You mean Ariel Sharon? That is his last name (which he actually chose himself. He was born Ariel Scheinermann, then he changed it to Sharon, probably because Scheinermann sounded too much German).
In fairness, his given name Ariel sound femmine to me, thanks to a certain cartoon character, but according to Hebrew grammar it's actually a male name and it literally means 'Lion of God'. Blame ignorant Disney.
Shakespeare's "Ariel" (from the Tempest) is also often depicted as a female character (though originally referred to as a male character). This graph does seem to imply however that its popularity as a female name may have been indeed influenced by Disney.
I forgot that Ariel sounds female, too. I don't know if that undermines or reinforces my point!
BTW, that Sharon was pronounced with a stress on the second syllable, whereas the feminine first name has a stress on the first syllable. (Similarly, if I read that someone's first name is Andrea I can't tell whether they are male or female unless I know where they come from, but if I hear it pronounced I can.)
"Last names don't encode gender" -- Claude Shannon
If one fails to invoke System 2 processing and reflect that world leaders are rarely known by their first names (assuming one even realizes that that example is where the 'Sharon may be male' thought is coming from), then they certainly do.