ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the answer for two questions: To what degree are first names used to classify a person's sex and is sex classification by first names becoming more ambiguous over time? If parents choose from different name pools based on the sex of their child, then is this connected with gender-specific roles and how have these changed in the past hundred years? Candice West and Don H. Zimmermann have expanded this terminological distinction to include a third, namely the "sex category." The classification of children according to sex by way of first names is in principle an open process, but in reality, in both America and Germany, completely structured. The first two are the traditional ones—Christian and German—and the third is the transnational category, including all foreign cultures, for example Anglo-American, Eastern European, Latin. First names have shown themselves to be a fundamental mechanism in classifying sex that is unaffected by social change.
