The Instability of Androgynous Names: The Symbolic Maintenance of Gender Boundaries' Stanley Lieberson, Susan Dumais, and Shyon Baumann Harvard University By definition, androgynous names do not serve as gender markers. Two radically different expectations about their growth are plausi- ble: on the one hand, the rise of the feminist movement, which mili- tates against gender distinctions, would suggest androgynous names increasing in recent decades. On the other hand, cross-cultural re- search indicates that first names designate gender more frequently than any other characteristic of a child or its family, suggesting a minimal increase. Examining data for all white births in Illinois in every year from 1916 through 1989 produces paradoxical results. Overall use of androgynous names is barely increasing; however, the disposition to use androgynous names has increased among par- ents of daughters. Analysis of the accidental ways in which androgy- nous names develop, their special characteristics, and their asym- metric growth patterns, leads to viewing the androgynous process as collective behavior that can be fruitfully examined through the perspective of the Schelling residential segregation model. The mini- mal increase in androgyny reflects a gender contamination effect that may be operating in a variety of other domains as well. This article examines trends in the use of androgynous names during most of a century and, in turn, considers the factors affecting these develop- ments. One can generate two radically different expectations about the use of androgynous names. Both are plausible. On the one hand, American ' In responseto an earlierdraft, Michael Hout provided very helpful suggestionsthat we are happy to acknowledge here, as did Tom Smith. We are grateful to Nancy Williamson for programminghelp, as well as her substantive suggestions. We also acknowledge with appreciationGina Hewes for her early work with these data, the late Zvi Griliches as well as Sharon Hays for suggestions, and Catherine Kenny and Mary A. Quigley for their help in preparingthe graphs and for their researchassis- tance. Barbara Sullivan, Illinois Department of Public Health, helped us obtain the relevant data on births in Illinois. This study was supportedin part by the National Science Foundation under grants SBR-92-23418 and SES-9022192.Direct all corre- spondenceto Stanley Lieberson, Departmentof Sociology,Harvard University, Cam- bridge, Massachusetts02138. E-mail: SL@wjh.harvard.edu ? 2000 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0002-9602/2000/ 10505-0001$02 .50 AJS Volume 105 Number 5 (March 2000): 1249-87 1249