Can you identify if a person is a male or a female based on his or her name ? Knowing someone's gender ahead of time helps especially when you are replying to email messages or initiating a voice conversation for the first time.
If you also have trouble identifying the sex from the name itself, here's a simple tip - use Facebook.
Just type the name of the person in Facebook search box and make an educated guess based on the profile photos of Facebook members that turn up in the search results.
Click the name tab which is just next to "All Results". When you are not sure which part is the surname, perform separate searches for the first and second part of the name.
I recommend Facebook over other social networks like Orkut or MySpace since Facebook has a more global audience and therefore the probability of finding people with similar names will be much higher.
Warning - it's not a foolproof method. For instance Indian names like "Laxmi", "Somya", "Manu" and so on are equally popular among males and females.
Reader Comments
I have always used Google Images to do this particular kind of search..
Written on 7/8/07 3:12 PM
Amit don't take me wrong, but i couldnt understand the whole point of this article.
are you promting facebook? Or i am just missing something here....
Written on 7/8/07 4:37 PM
LOL. Thanks so much for this enlightening article, Amit ;))
But seriously, I'm sure there are many who have a use for this. I am on the run from a few ;) j/k
Hey, but real serious now,.. It would be very nice if you would do a side-by-side comparison of the best social networking sites. I think people would very much appreciate having a good clue as to which one is the best. It is such a pain to have to join them first to find out their VERY weak points. Please blog about social networking sites! Thanks for all you have done up to now my friend. Your articles are an invaluable resource to some of us. Hope you're having a great summer!
Jason
Written on 7/8/07 10:28 PM
Hey Amit,
It seems you were facing a dearth of articles...
But again no offences..just a regular reader who got a downer :)
Written on 8/8/07 11:41 AM