Come to think of it, maybe this is part of the underlying reason for my brother to adopt his English-based name as his first name rather than his Mandarin-based birth name. As I have never considered using my English-based name as my first name. Of course, I run into the problem of most people either not being able to pronounce or remember my name, so I’ve resulted in using my middle name more often than not. Yet, I still didn’t have the desire to adopt my English-based name as my first name when we became citizens. I don’t know for a fact if my brother was teased at school when we first got here for his name, but I sure know that I wasn’t. I have definitely run across some rather interesting names for little girls working in a children’s hospital. Girl’s names are more unusual than boy’s name by large.

When boys become men, they are still expected to be serious members of the working world. Women on the other hand are more often encouraged to be aesthetic and perhaps fanciful.

You’re more likely to get ahead as a dude if you’ve got a conservative name like Thomas than with even a heroic-but-fanciful classical name like Perseus. It would seem like hubris to have such a flashy name for a guy, but for a woman Pheobe or Cassandra are perfectly acceptable names. It’s analogous to clothing. The power-color for men is the dark blue suit. For women it is red.

Should that be “more likely to receive creative names than *men*”?